The Future of the Mind (24 page)

There are several types of savants that have recently elicited the curiosity of scientists. About half of savants have some form of autism (the other half display other forms of mental illness or psychological disorder). They often have profound problems interacting socially, leading to deep isolation.

Then there is the “acquired savant syndrome,” in which people who appear perfectly normal suffer from some extreme trauma later in life (e.g., hitting their head on the bottom of a swimming pool or being struck by a baseball or a bullet), almost always on the left side of their brain. Some scientists, however, suggest that this distinction is misleading, that perhaps
all
savant skills are acquired. Since autistic savants begin to show their abilities around age three or four, perhaps their autism (like a blow to their head) is the origin of their abilities.

There is scientific disagreement about the origin of these extraordinary abilities. Some believe that these individuals are simply born this way and hence are unique, one-of-a-kind anomalies. Their skills, even if awakened by a bullet, are hardwired into their brains from birth. If so, then perhaps this skill can never be learned or transferred.

Others claim that such hardwiring violates the theory of evolution, which takes place incrementally over long periods of time. If savant geniuses exist, then the rest of us must also possess similar abilities, although they are latent. Does this mean, then, that one day we might be able to turn on these miraculous powers at will? Some believe so, and there are even published papers claiming that some savant skills are latent in all of us and can be brought to light using the magnetic fields generated by an electromagnetic scanner (TES). Or perhaps there is a genetic basis to this skill, in which case gene therapy might re-create these astonishing abilities. It might also be possible to cultivate stem cells that would allow neurons to grow in the prefrontal cortex and other key centers of the brain. Then we might be able to increase our mental abilities.

All these avenues are the source of much speculation and research. Not only might they allow doctors to reverse the ravages of diseases like Alzheimer’s, but they could also enable us to enhance our own intelligence. The possibilities are intriguing.

The first documented case of a savant was recorded in 1789 by Dr. Benjamin Rush, who studied an individual who seemed to be mentally handicapped. Yet when he was asked how many seconds a man had lived (who was seventy years, seventeen days, and twelve hours old), it took him only ninety seconds to give the correct answer of 2,210,500,800.

Dr. Darold Treffert, a Wisconsin physician, has studied these savants at length. He recites one story of a blind savant who was asked a simple question. If you put one corn kernel in the first square of a chess board, two kernels in the second, four in the next, and keep doubling after that, how many kernels would you have on the sixty-fourth square?
It took him just forty-five seconds to correctly reply: 18,446,744,073,709,551,616.

Perhaps the best-known example of a savant was the late Kim Peek, who was the inspiration for the movie
Rain Man
, starring Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise. Although Kim Peek was severely mentally handicapped (he was incapable of living by himself and could barely tie his shoelaces or button his shirt), he memorized about twelve thousand books and could recite lines from them, word for word, on any particular page. It took him about eight seconds to read a page. (He could memorize a book in about half an hour, but he read them in an unusual way. He could read both pages simultaneously, using each eye to read a different page at the same time.) Although incredibly shy, he eventually began to enjoy performing dazzling feats of mathematics before curious onlookers, who would try to challenge him with tricky questions.

Scientists, of course, have to be careful in distinguishing true savant skills from simple memorization tricks. Their skills are not just mathematical—they also extend to incredible musical, artistic, and mechanical capabilities. Since autistic savants have great difficulty verbally expressing their mental processes, another avenue is to investigate individuals who have Asperger’s syndrome, which is a milder form of autism. Only in 1994 was Asperger’s syndrome recognized as a distinct psychological condition, so there is very little solid research in this area. Like autistic individuals, people with Asperger’s have a difficult time interacting socially with others. However, with proper training, they can learn enough social skills to hold down a job and articulate their mental processes. And a fraction of them have remarkable savant skills. Some scientists believe that many great scientists had Asperger’s syndrome. This might explain the strange, reclusive nature of physicists like Isaac Newton and Paul Dirac (one of the founders of the quantum theory). Newton, in particular, was pathologically incapable of small talk.

I had the pleasure of interviewing one such individual, Daniel Tammet, who has written a best seller,
Born on a Blue Day
. Almost alone among these remarkable savants, he is able to articulate his thoughts in books, on the
radio, and in TV interviews. For someone who had such difficulty relating to others as a child, he now has a superb grasp of communication skills.

Daniel has the distinction of setting a world record for memorizing pi, a fundamental number in geometry. He was able to memorize it to 22,514 decimal places. I asked him how he prepared for such a herculean feat. Daniel told me that he associates a color or texture with every number. Then I asked him the key question: If every digit has a color or texture, then how does he remember tens of thousands of them? Sadly, at that point he said he doesn’t know. It just comes to him. Numbers have been his life ever since he was a child, and hence they simply appear in his mind. His mind is a constant mixture of numbers and colors.

ASPERGER’S AND SILICON VALLEY

So far, this discussion may seem abstract, without any direct bearing on our daily lives. But the impact of people with mild autism and Asperger’s may be more widespread than previously thought, especially in certain high-tech fields.

In the hit television series
The Big Bang Theory
, we follow the antics of several young scientists, mainly nerdy physicists, in their awkward quest for female companionship. In every episode, there is a hilarious incident that reveals how clueless and pathetic they are in this endeavor.

There is a tacit assumption running through the series that their intellectual brilliance is matched only by their geekiness. And anecdotally, people have noticed that among the high-tech gurus in Silicon Valley, a higher percentage than normal seem to lack some social skills. (There is a saying among women scientists who attend highly specialized engineering universities, where the girl-to-guy ratio is decidedly in their favor: “The odds are good, but the goods are odd.”)

Scientists set out to investigate this suspicion. The hypothesis is that people with Asperger’s and other mild forms of autism have mental skills ideally suited for certain fields, like the information technology industry. Scientists at University College London examined sixteen people who were diagnosed with a mild form of autism and compared them with sixteen normal individuals. Both groups were shown slides containing random numbers and letters arranged in increasingly complex patterns.

Their results showed that people with autism had a superior ability to focus on the task. In fact, as the tasks became harder, the gap between the intellectual skills of both groups began to widen, with the autistic individuals performing significantly better than the control group. (The test, however, also showed that these individuals were more easily distracted by outside noises and blinking lights than the control group.)

Dr. Nilli Lavie says, “
Our study confirms our hypothesis that people with autism have higher perceptual capacity compared to the typical population.… People with autism are able to perceive significantly more information than the typical adult.”

This certainly does not prove that all people who are intellectually brilliant have some form of Asperger’s. But it does indicate that fields requiring the ability to focus intellectually might have a higher proportion of people with Asperger’s.

BRAIN SCANS OF SAVANTS

The subject of savants has always been shrouded in hearsay and amazing anecdotal stories. But recently, the entire field has been turned upside down with the development of MRI and other brain scans.

Kim Peek’s brain, for example, was unusual. MRI scans show that it lacked the corpus callosum connecting the left and right brain, which is probably why he could read two pages at the same time. His poor motor skills were reflected in a deformed cerebellum, the area that controls balance. Unfortunately, MRI scans could not reveal the exact origin of his extraordinary abilities and photographic memory. But in general, brain scans have shown that many suffering from acquired savant syndrome have experienced damage to their left brain.

In particular, interest has focused on the left anterior temporal and orbitofrontal cortices. Some believe that perhaps
all
savant skills (autistic, acquired, and Asperger’s) arise from damage to this very specific spot in the left temporal lobe. This area can act like a “censor” that periodically flushes out irrelevant memories. But after damage occurs to the left hemisphere, the right hemisphere starts to take over. The right brain is much more precise than the left brain, which often distorts reality and confabulates. In fact, it is believed that the right brain must work extra hard because of damage to
the left brain, and hence savant skills develop as a consequence. For example, the right brain is much more artistic than the left brain. Normally, the left brain restricts this talent and holds it in check. But if the left brain is injured in a certain way, it may unleash the artistic abilities latent in the right brain, causing an explosion of artistic talent. So the key to unleashing savant capabilities might be to dampen the left brain so that it can no longer restrain the natural talents of the right brain. This is sometimes referred to as “left brain injury, right brain compensation.”

In 1998, Dr. Bruce Miller of the University of California at San Francisco performed a series of studies that seem to back this idea up. He and coworkers studied five normal individuals who began to show signs of frontotemporal dementia (FTD). As their dementia started to progress, savant abilities gradually began to emerge. As their dementia got worse, several of these individuals began to exhibit even more extraordinary artistic ability, although none had shown gifts in this area before. Moreover, the abilities they exhibited were typical of savant behavior. Their abilities were visual, not auditory, and their artworks, remarkable as they were, were just copies lacking any original, abstract, or symbolic qualities. (One patient actually got better during the study. But her emerging savant skills were also reduced as a consequence. This suggests a close relationship between emerging disorders of the left temporal lobe and emerging savant skills.)

Dr. Miller’s analysis seemed to show that degeneration of the left anterior temporal and orbitofrontal cortices probably decreased inhibition of the visual systems in the right hemisphere, thereby increasing artistic abilities. Again, damaging the left hemisphere in a particular location forced the right hemisphere to take over and develop.

In addition to the savants, MRI scans have also been done on people with hyperthymestic syndrome, who also have photographic memories. These people do not suffer from autism and mental disorders, but they share some of their skills. In the entire United States, there are only four documented cases of true photographic memory. One of them is Jill Price, a school administrator in Los Angeles. She can recall precisely what she was doing on any particular day going back decades. But she complains that she finds it difficult to erase certain thoughts. Indeed, her brain seems to be “stuck on autopilot.” She compares her memory to watching the world through a split screen, in which the past and present are constantly competing for her attention.

Since 2000, scientists at the University of California at Irvine have scanned her brain, and they’ve found it to be unusual. Several regions were larger than normal, such as the caudate nuclei (which is involved with forming habits) and the temporal lobe (which stores facts and figures). It is theorized that these two areas work in tandem to create her photographic memory. Her brain is therefore different from the brains of savants who suffer an injury or damage to their left temporal lobe. The reason is unknown, but it points to another path by which one may obtain these fantastic mental abilities.

CAN WE BECOME SAVANTS?

All this raises the intriguing possibility that one might be able to deliberately deactivate parts of the left brain and thereby increase the activity of the right brain, forcing it to acquire savant capabilities.

We recall that transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS, allows one to effectively silence parts of the brain. If so, then why can’t we silence this part of the left anterior temporal and orbitofrontal cortices using the TMS and turn on a savantlike genius at will?

This idea has actually been tried. Dr. Allan Snyder of the University of Sydney, Australia, made headlines a few years ago when he claimed that, by applying the TMS to a certain part of the left brain, his subjects could suddenly perform savantlike feats. By directing low-frequency magnetic waves into the left hemisphere, one can in principle turn off this dominant region of the brain so that the right hemisphere takes over. Dr. Synder and his colleagues did an experiment with eleven male volunteers. They applied the TMS to the subjects’ left frontotemporal region while the subjects were performing tests involving reading and drawing. This did not produce savant skills among the subjects, but two of them had significant improvements in their ability to proofread words and recognize duplicated words.
In another experiment, Dr. R. L. Young and his colleagues gave a battery of psychological tests to seventeen individuals. The tests were specifically designed to test for savant skills. (Tests of this sort analyze a person’s ability to memorize facts, manipulate numbers and dates, create artwork, or perform music.) Five of the subjects reported improvement in savantlike skills after treatment with TMS.