I found this in another forum today. It is an extremely incredible documentary about a man who has Savant Syndrome (if you have seen the movie Rain Man, you will know what I am talking about). I suggest that you watch all five videos.
Here is a wikipedia definition of Savant Syndrome:
quote:
Savant Syndrome is usually recognized during childhood and is found in children with autism and other developmental difficulties. However it can also be acquired in an accident or illness, typically one that injures or impairs the left side of the brain. There is some research that suggests that it can be induced, which might support the view that savant abilities are latent within all people but are obscured by the normal functioning intellect. By the help of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation researchers are providing empirical evidence for the hypothesis that savant-like skills can be improved in a healthy individual by temporary disruption of the left front part of the brain - at least with some of the probates.
Most autistic savants have very extensive mental abilities, called splinter skills. They can recall facts, numbers, license plates, maps, and extensive lists of sports and weather statistics after only being exposed to them once. Some savants can mentally note and then recall perfectly a very long sequence of music, numbers, or speech. Some, dubbed mental calculators, can do exceptionally fast arithmetic, including prime factorization. Other skills include precisely estimating distances and angles by sight, calculating the day of the week for any given date over the span of tens of thousands of years, and being able to accurately gauge the passing of time without a clock. Most autistic savants have a single special skill, while others have multiple skills. Usually these skills are concrete, non-symbolic, right hemisphere skills, rather than left hemisphere skills, which tend to be more sequential, logical, and symbolic.
Why autistic savants are capable of these astonishing feats is not quite clear. Some savants have obvious neurological abnormalities (such as the lack of corpus callosum in Kim Peek's non-autistic brain), but the brains of most savants are anatomically and physiologically normal; at least, there is no abnormality that modern science can detect. Some neurologists (see e.g., Oliver Sacks) theorize that those with savantism utilize an "innate" modular arithmetic to compute such complex problems as what day of the week a distant date (for instance, July 11th, 88182) will fall on. There are only about 50 - 100 recognized prodigious savants in the world.
electro88
I seen this awhile ago, its crazy how he learnt icelandic so quick
Pfft, don't bump that documentary thread, all of the links are to bat crazy left-wing conspiracy theory movies.
FunkyCrew
quote:
Originally posted by electro88
I seen this awhile ago, its crazy how he learnt icelandic so quick
+1!! i actually wanted to post it few months ago when I stumbled across it but forgot
absolutely unbelievable and amazing, he is one lucky guy to be so normal in one sense but so different in another
Engine9
ugh oh meat is x posting
MikeyN
OMG THATS ED ! I was watching all of these yesterday, small world.
Pett
quote:
Originally posted by DigiNut
Pfft, don't bump that documentary thread, all of the links are to bat crazy left-wing conspiracy theory movies.
lol i agree some are, but i tried to include everyones recommendations
jeeper_095
It's said that Einstein had a similar thing. Researchers found abnormalities in his brain that supposedly made him think clearly and faster than the average human being.
I think it was said that he had a "bridge" linking the 2 lobes of his brain.
Nonetheless, the documentary is interesting stuff.
monishb
I am impressed wow! just shows the potential of a human brain, just imagine if the entire world was so smart.
