Savant syndrome

The island talent - also called Savant Syndrome - is the phenomenon that people who have a cognitive disability or otherwise (often profound ) developmental disorder, very special exceptional performance in a small portion ( "islands" ) can accomplish. 50 percent of known savants are autistic. Six out of seven savants are male. There are no reliable studies of how often occurs the Savant Syndrome. The researcher Darold Treffert Autism suggested in 1989 a distinction in amazing and talented savants. While the amazing savants have really outstanding skills, the talented savants to a maximum of the average standard but which are remarkable in view of their disability.

Currently, about 100 people worldwide are known, which can be described as amazing savants under this subdivision. The intelligence quotient of people is usually less than 70, but can also be average, be above average in some cases. The skills are pronounced very differently. Into the public consciousness came the Savant syndrome, among others through the film Rain Man.

The concept

The term was introduced in 1887 in a series of lectures before the London Medical Society of the English neurologist John Langdon - Down " idiot savant " ( meant as " limited knower " ) is misleading and discriminatory by today's standards.

Currently it is called savants or savants. Particularly outstanding savants are referred to by the American psychiatrist and researcher Dr. Darold Treffert as prodigious savants derived from prodigy ( child prodigy, talent ). Autistic assessed island gifted are also called " Autistic Savant " or " Savant Autistique ". Also, the term Savant is misleading because the noun " Savant " in French and in the English language " knower " or " scholar " means in a broad sense.

The term " island talent " gets to the heart of the phenomenon most likely because he expresses that in a generally weak talent in a confined individual subject, an island, an outstanding performance may be present, which stands in bizarre contrast to the rest of the personality. It is " an isolated gift midst of defects " ( Douwe Draaisma, 2006).

Causes

The causes of island talents are not yet known. The case reports in the literature contain a variety of characterizations. Some musical savants are blind.

Calendar Calculator, so savants who can immediately call the respective day of the week to almost any date are mostly predisposed autistic. We still do not know what method this calendar computer work, whether they have a photographic memory, are mathematically gifted or develop its own system, all data over the years with which they can remember. Currently, it is believed that the Savants an important filtering function is missing, the irrelevant data hides.

Island skills are almost always congenital, but may also have arisen later from a brain injury. In most savants, the language is clearly underdeveloped; There are also those who take a foreign language in no time. For each rule, enough exceptions can be assigned. Generalizations are not possible, and accordingly vary the interpretations of the causes.

In the search for explanations is to distinguish between testable skills of savants and the question of why they can. First, it comes to possible strategies to apply the island gifted, and whether these services are based on recognizable reminders, computational arts or skilled rules of thumb. By calculation artists among the savants, we know that they do not actually count, but retrieve the necessary elements of a program stored in its memory almost unending store of strings of numbers and " shell stones " and combined into a new sequence of numbers, which are then also stored and when re- querying the same task - even 20 years later - are readily available. Sometimes it also original error and subsequent correction are repeated stereotyped what these memory theory is based. Sign artists such as Stephen Wiltshire usually have a photographic memory, with the overall picture with all, even the smallest details will be included in an act in the memory. Retain talented island, as already described by Langdon Down, the superficial facts, but not the relationships and not the underlying theories.

The second question is why the island gifted to develop such strategies and not others. A unified theory is not yet in sight. Precisely because of the diversity of manifestations, most hypotheses that were derived from individual phenomena, only a limited value.

The oldest theory assumed in the accident genius savants, where by a birth defect all talents were damaged beyond a single irreparable. According to current knowledge, this hypothesis is not tenable. Another consideration examines the explanation of the phenomenon in the compensation. Island have gifted due to a sensory disorder or autistic plants, compensatory a tendency to preoccupation with the trivial and bizarre activities and can be deterred by anything from this one track mind. After Douwe Draaisma Savant is the product of concentration, one-sidedness and endless repetition.

One hypothesis Harvard neurologist Norman Geschwind and Albert Galaburda based on findings of brain research, after which enters an accelerated growth of the brain between the tenth and the eighteenth week of embryonic phase. Disturbances of these explosively accelerated neuron connections lead to massive brain damage. One of the possible confounding factors is the male hormone testosterone, which circulates in the body, while the testes of embryos are created. A high level of testosterone has an inhibitory effect on the growth of the cerebral cortex. This theory could explain the male overrepresentation among the savants.

Also, the brain researcher Michael Fitzgerald from Trinity College ( Dublin ) provides the outstanding creativity of savants as a result of existing in the autistic neural switching errors. In his opinion, many geniuses such as Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton and Mozart more or less severe forms of autism were present. Is Allan Snyder of the University of Sydney on the assumption that you have to turn off certain areas of the brain to release the reserves of other areas can. However, his trial results with strong magnetic fields (rTMS ) and the resulting theories are controversial.

Another common theory is that the filtering mechanisms of the brain are disrupted in savants. This means that only selected information of the unconscious and only individual, held for relevant information of memory would fed to the conscious part of the brain, to prevent its excessive demand and to let the people decide in everyday life faster and more intuitive. Some scientists believe that every human being without exception, all sense impressions stored in his memory, but only has access to the decision makers, while a Savant can access in a portion on each piece of information, regardless of its relevance or emotional significance.

Recent research (2012 ) on fruit flies to memory formation also suggest possible causes related to dopamine and Savants. This would respond to these theories. It could be shown that a dopamine receptor ( Damb - receptor) in the process of the " forgetting" plays an important role.

It is important to bear in mind that there is no one savant, but a wide range of savants with very different brain disorders and partial talents. Therefore, it is also difficult to Savant state to "simulate" normal and gifted people temporarily transform into the " autistic genius" as it tries, the Australian researchers Allan Snyder.

Famous people with talent Island

Exceptional memory

• Solomon Schereschewski, born 1886 in Russia, was a memory phenomenon, whose comprehensive memory was apparently not subjected to the usual memory laws. The Russian neuropsychologist Alexander Romanovich Luria observed Schereschewski 30 years with regular experiments. In 1965 he published a case study, which appeared in English translation in 1968.
• Kim Peek (1951-2009), known by his own admission the contents of about 12,000 books by heart. This amount of books he read by an extraordinary ability: He could read two pages simultaneously, that is the one to the left and the other to the right eye. He also called for every American city postal code, area code and the highway that leads there. In addition, he was able to call at any date within seconds of the week. Kim Peek was the model of Raymond Babbitt in the movie Rain Man.
• Orlando Serrell was hit with ten years of a baseball on his head and remembers since then to every single detail of his life since the accident.
• Daniel Tammet learned 22,514 digits of the mathematical constant Pi from memory and thus broke the European record, look in the film Brainman. It is controversial whether Daniel Tammet is really a Savant because it uses memory techniques and, contrary to the usual symptoms of Asperger's autism also keep names and faces well. Moreover, it is striking that he (about participation in the Memorial Sports World Cup, among other surname ) does not conceal appropriate to its history details in interviews and his books.

Musical talents

• Leslie Lemke (blind), which once belonged to enact pieces of music.
• Tony DeBlois (blind) who can play about 8000 pieces on the piano and dominated 13 other instruments.
• Derek Paravicini (blind), who learned to play the piano with two years, gave his first concert at age nine, and at age 28 can play 12,000 songs by heart. He learned the songs by a single hearing.
• Matt Savage ( autistic ), 1992 born exceptional jazz pianist, has taught six years overnight playing the piano itself. At seven, he was already composing his own pieces and brought out his first CD.
• Brittany Maier (whether blind, autistic ), born in the USA in 1989 pianist who possessed the age of 18 via a repertoire of over 15,000 pieces. She plays only with six fingers, as they can not all move.
• Tom Wiggins ( blind; 1849-1908 ), was exceptionally musically talented, but capable under average in all other areas of life.
• Aleksander Vinter ( autistic, born 17 April 1987) can compose songs in seconds and then finish in a short time. He already has several thousand composes songs, is currently active with his Savant Electro project.

Calculated talents

• Daniel Tammet can mathematical problems and calculations extremely rapidly solve and reproduce the results on up to a hundred decimal places.
• Rüdiger Gamm has an extraordinary talent that lies above all in the numbers. It involves both the calculation in the traditional sense, on the other hand also to the retention of results with large sets of numbers, which if required - can be " accessed " - even after many years. It is controversial whether Gamm is really a Savant because he has the ability to adapt its computing algorithms new problems. Savants act but rather intuitive and can not.

Artistic talents

• Produce Alonzo Clemons, the animal sculptures out of clay by illustrations in books detail, however, can neither read nor write, and speak only very rudimentary.
• Stephen Wiltshire, who can draw a picture after a single viewing detailed and correct perspective. In two experiments he drew after sightseeing flights over London and Rome detailed panoramic views of both cities. He repeated this unbelievable with the skyline of Frankfurt under the RTL TV show! The show's oddities on 13 September 2006. Important Wiltshire drawings are shown in " S. Wiltshire, Floating Cities. Venice, Amsterdam, Leningrad and Moscow ", London 1991.
• Gilles Trehin, since 1984 a fictional city called Urville on the paper in the form of numerous drawings " built ". He studied history in order to give his city a history.
• Gottfried Mind (1768-1814), who was physically disabled and was left behind as mentally, but showed a talent in the field of visual arts and to children and animal motifs - especially cats drawings - specialized.
• Seth F. Henriett ( Fajcsák Henrietta, born 1980 ) is an early childhood autistic poets, painters, writers.
• George Widener is an American artist ( b. 1962 ), who was already considered as a child behavioral problems. In the early 1980s he worked for the U.S. Air Force in Germany, where he auswertete espionage material. He studied engineering in Texas he broke off and lived for a time in the Amsterdam squatter scene. Later, he was homeless, but was looking for daytime libraries to read there and study. In 2000, Asperger's syndrome was diagnosed in him. Today George Widener is a sought-after artist who translates his talent for dealing with data and numbers into extraordinary drawings.

Linguistic abilities

• Emil Krebs mastered 68 languages ​​fluently in speech and writing and dealt with 111 languages.
• Ziad Fazah, the Lebanese speaks 58 languages ​​fluently, including Chinese, Thai, Greek, Indonesian, Hindi and Persian. Most of these languages ​​has taught himself Fazah. But do this requires a lot of perseverance and discipline, explains the Multilingual, has even managed with his talent in the Guinness Book of World Records.
• Giuseppe Mezzofanti, Italian cardinal. He lived from 1774 to 1849, knew about 57 languages ​​and spoke of these 38 fluent.
• Rafael Merry del Val (1865-1930), Cardinal Secretary of State, understood and spoke 63 languages.
• Christopher Taylor, who can understand 25 languages ​​, writing, reading, and ten of them more or less fluent. In tomography, there are no special features. Autistic savants are otherwise linguistically not particularly gifted, so that Christopher Taylor stands out. It is unclear why he performs poorly in general intelligence tests, however, reached the university level in language tests. It seems that the autistic motivation is different so that it only collects words and phrases and considers language as a mere ( learnable ) system, the use of this for communicating with other people, however, is unimportant.
• Daniel Tammet has in addition to his mathematical talent and an outstanding memory also exceptional linguistic skills. In 2005 produced TV documentary The Boy With the Incredible Brain him was given the task to learn Icelandic in a week and then to give the Icelandic television interview. Tammet mastered this task without much difficulty. Currently dominated Tammet allegedly nine languages ​​fluently, including even one that he himself has invented ( Mänti ), which inspired by the Finno -Ugric languages.

Visual talents

• Temple Grandin, US-American, thinks in pictures and can manifest itself in animals, particularly cattle into think. Today, she teaches at Colorado State University. Her life was now as that of Rain Mans Kim Peek filmed.