Treffert and others who have studied the condition is that savant syndrome is a phenomenon of left brain damage and right brain recruitment or compensation. “Most savants are very deficient in language which is a left hemisphere skill but are very prolific in right brain skills.” “Those tend to be right brain skills,” Dr. Treffert explained that there is a notable uniformity about savants and that the unique skills they display are almost always in five general areas: art, music, calendar counting, mechanical ability, and “lightning calculation.”
Not all savants are autistic, and not all autistic persons are savants.ĭr. These other forms are more common than autistic disorder however, approximately 50 percent of those with savant syndrome have autistic disorder, and the other 50 percent have some other form of developmental disability, mental retardation or brain injury or disease. In other forms of development disability, mental retardation or brain injury, savant skills occur in less than 1 percent of these people. Treffert -approximately one in 10 people with autistic disorder have some savant skills.
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KIM PEEK, seen here in the Buick from the movie “Rain Man,” was able to read and memorize whole books and possessed “calendar memory,” the ability to match days with dates many years past.Photographer Richard Green & Salinas Valley Memorial Healthcare System, CA.Īccording to a Web site maintained by Dr. There he encountered such oddities as an autistic child who had memorized the entire Milwaukee bus system and another child who was totally mute, but could put together a 250-piece jigsaw puzzle in minutes. Treffert has become a leading expert on savant syndrome since he started a Children's Unit at a psychiatric hospital in Wisconsin following his residency.
Langdon Down,” psychiatrist Darold Treffert, MD, told Neurology Today.ĭr. “More has happened to understand savant syndrome in the 20 years since ‘Rain Man’ than in the 120 years since it was first described in 1887 by Dr. Of special interest to neurologists today is a variant of savant syndrome, acquired savant syndrome, in which individuals develop remarkable artistic or creative talents after suffering a debilitating brain trauma. With his father, he travelled widely and spoke about his condition in the wake of the notoriety that came with “Rain Main.” NEW UNDERSTANDING: SAVANT SYNDROME And like many savants, he possessed an extraordinary “calendar memory”-the ability to match days with dates many years past. From an early age, Peek had a prodigious memory and as an adult he was able to read and memorize whole books, as well as vast amounts of information about far-flung topics. The story of Kim Peek, and of savant syndrome generally, is a story of the brain's extraordinary neuroplasticity, and the ways in which that plasticity allows for humans to compensate for their disabilities with wondrous and spectacular abilities. But to say that he “suffered” from his condition is to misread the extraordinary implications of the special variant of autism-known as savant syndrome (the term has replaced the archaic “idiot savant”)-that was his condition in life. Born with macrocephaly and congenital brain abnormalities, he was not autistic but had social and other disabilities as a result of those abnormalities that were similar to autism. DAROLD TREFFERT: “More has happened to understand savant syndrome in the 20 years since ‘Rain Man’ than in the 120 years since it was first described in 1887 by Dr.
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