Savants

Just watched a program where a 10 year old was composing his own jazz music while talking about Gustav Mahler, Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker. It also had this amazing study in Australia where they were used magnetic waves to stimulate the area of the brain they believe savants use most. The program also had a few cases of temporary savants who became prolific artists or musicians for a few years before total dementia took over their lives. I have a co-worker whose brother is somewhere between highly-functioning autistic and a savant. He works with large factories to understand how their production lines can be modified to improve output, he says he can feel the inefficiencies in the machines and is wildly accurate. He is also really skilled a terrain-mapping, once he's been through the woods he can run back through with his eyes closed because he know where everything is. It's become a part-time job leading hunters through the woods in the dark to get a jump on their prey. What people are capable of, in every and all cases, never ceases to be amazing.

3 thoughts on “Savants

      • Re: my what pointy bangs you have

        Its sort of a running joke. Growing my hair out has given me the awful curling up bangs and my girl decided to mention that it was very aeon fluxy in the middle of a rather heated discussion while giggling manically. You have to love momentary giggling fits in the middle of arguments.

Comments are closed.