More Amazing Mental Feats
This instalment continues to look at individuals with extraordinary mental abilities. Savants have one or more mental abilities that can be considered a superpower. Most savants are on the autistic spectrum and can possess social, cognitive or language difficulties and often have an IQ of below 70. An article in The Guardian (Feb 12/05) estimates that 10% of the autistic population and 1% of the neurotypical population fall into the category of savant.
One of the most famous savants would be the late Kim Peek (1951-2009), who Dustin Hoffman’s character was based on in the film Rain Man (1988). Although Peek had autism, he also suffered from congenital brain abnormalities resulting in developmental disabilities. He struggled to walk. He couldn’t button his own shirt and he scored well below average on a standard IQ test. However, he had read over 12,000 books and remembered every detail of the contents. He could read two pages at once in seconds, the left eye reading one page while the right eye scanned the other page simultaneously. Peek was also referred to as a mega-savant, as he was a genius in 15 subjects including history, geography and literature.
Leslie Lemke was born with such serious physical defects that doctors had to remove both of his eyes. As a toddler, he had to be force-fed and taught to swallow as he was unable to do this on his own. He could not stand unaided until he was 12 and could not walk until he was 15. He also suffered from cerebral palsy. Despite this, his parents purchased a piano when he was 7. He began to play and had never had a formal lesson. When he was 14 years old, his mother woke in the middle of the night to hear him playing Tchaikovski’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in its’ entirety and perfectly. He had heard the piece only once earlier in the day. From that point, Leslie’s musical abilities flourished as he was able to play any piece of music after only hearing it once. He appeared on television numerous times and toured all over the United States, Japan and Scandinavia performing concerts.
Stephen Wiltshire was born in London, England. He was diagnosed at an early age with autism and was mute when he was young. He attended a school for children with special needs and with their help was able to develop verbal communication skills. He began to speak fully at age 9. It was also at this time that his artistic talents developed. So much so, that he received his first commission at age 8 by former British Prime Minister Edward Heath. Stephen is best known for recreating architectural drawings of highly detailed and perfectly rendered landscapes and cityscapes from memory. For one work, he had drawn 4 square miles of the City of London after a single helicopter ride over the city. He produced a nineteen-foot long drawing of 305 square miles of New York City after a 20-minute helicopter ride. He has since travelled the globe, recreating cityscapes of Rome, Madrid, Singapore, Jerusalem and other major cities. He’s been awarded an MBE and honourary art and architectural degrees. He has been the subject of several television documentaries, owns his own gallery in London and his book, Floating Cities (1991), was number one on The Sunday Times bestseller list.
Blog Neatorama (Sept 5/08) stated, “Sometimes the most amazing abilities of the human brain are revealed exactly when things go wrong with it.” We might ask ourselves if the neurotypical brain somehow blocks these abilities? Perhaps going beyond the norm is a latent characteristic which is simply dormant at our current collective stage of evolution? There are ongoing studies on this subject by researcher Dr. Allen Snyder of the Centre for the Mind, University of Sydney, Australia. He proposes that by temporarily impairing the right frontal lobe in healthy subjects with low frequency magnetic pulses, savant-like abilities could manifest. As reported in the New York Times (June 22/03), 40% of his test subjects had “exhibited extraordinary and new-found mental skills…it’s a breakthrough that may lead to a revolution in the way we understand the limits of our own intelligence – and the functioning of the human brain in general.”
By Elaina Curran, HPD, DSFH, AdvDPLRT, Clinical Hypnotherapist and Past Life Regression Therapist
As published by BS35 Local Magazine - Christmas Issue 2019
