Autistic Savants

Recently national geographic is telecasting series of documentaries titled “My brilliant brain”. The series is based on individuals who are gifted with very extraordinary abilities. In a way they could be called as Geniuses. Theses people are either born geniuses or someone they termed as accidental geniuses. One episode tells about a person who when given any date of the history can tell which day it was. There was this individual who was mysteriously awakened to a talent in his middle life which he didn’t know he had. The series was really interesting and made me think about why some individuals are gifted with some extraordinary abilities or accidentally discover some special art or skill while there are others who, in technical sense, are ill or with disabilities (mental or physical).
I remember seeing character of Raymond Babbitt in movie ‘Rain man” beautifully played by Dustin hoffman inspired by a real life person kim peek who was what is called as ‘autistic savant’. Autistic savant is the one with autism who has a special skill. I googled just to find any interesting stuff on autistic savants and found an article http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,1409903,00.html which was published in the Gurdian. It ‘s an interesting read and opens with a real life savant named Daniel Tammet who can perform mind boggling mathematical calculations at .breakneck speeds.
Here are few excerpts:
Daniel Tammet has been obsessed with counting. Now he is 26, and a mathematical genius who can figure out cube roots quicker than a calculator and recall pi to 22,514 decimal places. He also happens to be autistic, which is why he can't drive a car, wire a plug, or tell right from left. He lives with extraordinary ability and disability.
"Savants have usually had some kind of brain damage. Whether it's an onset of dementia later in life, a blow to the head or, in the case of Daniel, an epileptic fit. And it's that brain damage which creates the savant.
There is something unusual I found by reading this article about these individuals. An estimated 10% of the autistic population - and an estimated 1% of the non-autistic population - have savant abilities, but no one knows exactly why. Savants can't usually tell us how they do what they do but Tammet can. He says that he can see numbers in the form of figures when he does the calculations mentally. He describes what he sees in his head and that is the key ability which differentiates him from all other Savants.
Article also describes about some other real life Savants
Autistic savants have displayed a wide range of talents, from reciting all nine volumes of Grove's Dictionary Of Music to measuring exact distances with the naked eye. The blind American savant Leslie Lemke played Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No1, after he heard it for the first time, and he never had so much as a piano lesson. And the British savant Stephen Wiltshire was able to draw a highly accurate map of the London skyline from memory after a single helicopter trip over the city.
Then suddenly I think of a different breed of individuals like, Srinivasa Ramanujan, who can emotionally attach themselves with some form of logical entities or thoughts. This is rather unusual in a sense that they can form a mental imagery of what other people ‘see’ as abstract .
I think it is because of this strange ability of associating abstract things such as numbers or logical entities with emotions or human element of care, is what makes working of mind mysterious and beautiful.
As often Ramanujan used to say “An equation for me has no meaning, unless it represents a thought of God”