The Prodigy's Cousin (34 page)

Alonzo Clemons fell
:
William E. Schmidt, “Gifted Retardates: The Search for Clues to Mysterious Talent,”
New York Times,
July 12, 1983; Treffert,
Islands of Genius
. To see Alonzo sculpting, see
Ingenious Minds,
“Sculpting Prodigy,” Science Channel; and
Beautiful Minds
.

“as his personality crying”
:
Rob Lammie, “The Amazing Stories of 6 Sudden Savants,”
Mental Floss,
June 29, 2010. For more on Tommy McHugh, see “Ex–Street Fighter, 60, Turned into a Fanatical Artist by a Brain
Haemorrhage That Physically Altered His Mind,”
Daily Mail,
March 15, 2010; Helen Thomson, “Mindscapes: Stroke Turned Ex-Con into Rhyming Painter,”
New Scientist,
May 10, 2013; and “Creative Side Unlocked by Stroke,” BBC News, June 21, 2004.

he also displayed impressive
:
T. L. Brink, “Idiot Savant with Unusual Mechanical Ability: An Organic Explanation,”
American Journal of Psychiatry
137, no. 2 (1980): 250–51.

Others had already observed
:
Rimland, “Inside the Mind of the Autistic Savant.”

A psychologist examining
:
Brink, “Idiot Savant with Unusual Mechanical Ability,” 251.

It was a line
:
Bruce L. Miller et al., “Enhanced Artistic Creativity with Temporal Lobe Degeneration,”
Lancet
348, no. 904 (1996): 1744–45. For later, related works, see Bruce L. Miller et al., “Emergence of Artistic Talent in Frontotemporal Dementia,”
Neurology
51, no. 4 (1998): 978–82; and Bruce L. Miller et al., “Functional Correlates of Musical and Visual Ability in Frontotemporal Dementia,”
British Journal of Psychiatry
176, no. 5 (2000): 458–63.

One such individual
:
For more on this man, see Sheri Fink, “The Search for the Origins of Humankind's Creativity,”
Oregonian,
July 1, 1998; and Graham Phillips, “The Scourge of Genius,”
Sunday Telegraph,
Feb. 15, 1998.

Miller and his colleagues eventually
:
Miller et al., “Functional Correlates of Musical and Visual Ability in Frontotemporal Dementia.”

“that somehow a disease”
:
Rob Stein, “Patients' New Gift Paints Clearer Image of Disease,”
Washington Post,
Oct. 26, 1998.

Miller and his colleagues discovered
:
Miller et al., “Functional Correlates of Musical and Visual Ability in Frontotemporal Dementia.”

Researchers put forward a flurry
:
For an overview of these theories, see Darold A. Treffert and Daniel D. Christensen, “Inside the Mind of a Savant,”
Scientific American,
Dec. 2005.

Allan W. Snyder
:
Information in this chapter on the experiments in which Allan Snyder and his colleagues attempted to induce skills comes from a telephone interview with Allan Snyder conducted on June 29, 2015; and academic articles, including Allan W. Snyder et al., “Savant-Like Skills Exposed in Normal People by Suppressing the Left Fronto-temporal Lobe,”
Journal of Integrative Neuroscience
2, no. 2 (2003): 149–58; Jason Gallate et al., “Reducing False Memories by Magnetic Pulse Stimulation,”
Neuroscience Letters
449 (2009): 151–54; Allan Snyder, “Savant-Like Numerosity Skills Revealed in Normal People by Magnetic Pulses,”
Perception
35 (2006): 837–45; Allan Snyder, “Explaining and Inducing Savant Skills: Privileged Access to Lower Level, Less-Processed Information,”
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B
364 (2009): 1399–405; and Richard P. Chi and Allan W. Snyder, “Brain Stimulation Enables the Solution of an Inherently Difficult Problem,”
Neuroscience Letters
515, no. 2 (2012): 121–24.

the classic example
:
Oliver Sacks,
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
(New York: Summit Books, 1985).

Or maybe that inner savant
:
For discussion of this point, see Robyn L. Young, Michael C. Ridding, and Tracy L. Morrell, “Switching Skills On by Turning Off Part of the Brain,”
Neurocase
10, no. 3 (2004): 215–22.

But a 2004 study
:
Ibid.

in one other small study
:
Chi and Snyder, “Brain Stimulation Enables the Solution of an Inherently Difficult Problem.”

After all, the ratio
:
Treffert,
Islands of Genius
. A preliminary report generated using Treffert's savant registry found that the gender breakdown among acquired savants is also lopsided. See Treffert, “Savant Registry.”

There's a similar gender breakdown
:
Among Bruce Miller's frontotemporal patients who gained skills following the onset of the disease, five of the seven were men (the split was closer to even among patients who maintained visual or musical abilities they had before the onset of dementia). See Miller et al., “Functional Correlates of Musical and Visual Ability in Frontotemporal Dementia.”

Studies have found
:
See, for example, S. Baron-Cohen et al., “Elevated Fetal Steroidogenic Activity in Autism,”
Molecular Psychiatry
20, no. 3 (2015): 369–76.

“perhaps surprising”
:
Berit Brogaard, Simo Vanni, and Juha Silvanto, “Seeing Mathematics: Perceptual Experience and Brain Activity in Acquired Synesthesia,”
Neurocase
19, no. 6 (2013): 566–75.

There have been similarly puzzling
:
Nathalie Boddaert et al., “Autism: Functional Brain Mapping of Exceptional Calendar Capacity,”
British Journal of Psychiatry
187, no. 1 (2005): 83–86.

An fMRI of George Widener
:
This fMRI was conducted as part of a PBS program, not an academic study. See “Mystery of the Savant Brain,”
Nova,
transcript of episode that aired Oct. 24, 2012, quoting Joy Hirsch.

The savants who demonstrated
:
For a discussion of why this pattern might arise in math savants, see Brogaard, Vanni, and Silvanto, “Seeing Mathematics.”

Chapter 9: Lightning in a Bottle

As a toddler, Autumn
:
The events in this chapter described by Autumn de Forest come from a telephone interview conducted on Oct. 30, 2014. The events in this chapter described by Doug de Forest come from telephone
interviews conducted on Nov. 19, 2014, and April 7 and Sept. 7, 2015; and e-mail. Autumn's story was also drawn from her Web site, marketing materials, and news reports, including “Could Most Modern Art Be Done by an 8-Year-Old? This Child Prodigy Proves That It Can!,”
Daily Mail,
Oct. 15, 2010; “Pint-Size Picasso,”
Time for Kids,
Aug. 30, 2013; “Autumn de Forest Interview: Young Prodigy Artist Inspires and Gives Back,” TeensWannaKnow.com, June 7, 2014; Veronica, “Autumn de Forest on Artistic Inspiration!,” SweetyHigh.com, April 23, 2014; Hugo Kugiya, “She's Just 8, yet She's Painted Art Worth $250,000,”
Today,
Oct. 13, 2010; Bailey Powell, “An Interview with Child Prodigy Autumn de Forest,”
Fort Worth Key Magazine,
Sept. 29, 2012; Terri Bryce Reeves, “Prodigy Autumn de Forest Is Latest Artist in de Forest Family,”
Tampa Bay Times,
Nov. 8, 2012; Camille Moore and Brittany Taylor, “11-Year-Old Painter Autumn de Forest Spills What It's Like to Be an Art Prodigy,”
Girls' Life,
July 4, 2013; Stephanie Anderson Witmer, “Ordinary Children, Extraordinary Talents,”
USA Today Back to School,
Fall 2014; Erika Pope, “Empowering Autumn,”
Vegas Seven,
Nov. 11, 2010; “Seven-Year-Old Artist Expected to Draw Attention at This Year's Malibu Chamber Arts Festival,”
Malibu Surfside News,
July 16, 2009; Ben Marcus, “The Malibu Arts Festival Sets Up Camp at the Civic Center This Weekend,”
Malibu Times,
July 22, 2009; Erica Tempesta, “Child Prodigy Autumn de Forest on Painting and Being One of Aéropostale's Epic Kids,”
Styleite,
Feb. 17, 2014; “10 Art Prodigies You Should Know,”
Huffington Post,
July 27, 2012; Julia Halperin, “From the Palettes of Babes: Four Prodigious Child Artists to Watch,”
Huffington Post,
Jan. 31, 2011; and Autumn's television appearances, including on
Home & Family,
One on One with Steve Adubato,
Discovery Health,
Studio 10,
Inside Edition,
The
Wendy Williams Show,
and
Daytime.

“little kid drawings”
:
Autumn de Forest, telephone interview, Oct. 30, 2014.

“Like a Rothko”
:
Reeves, “Prodigy Autumn de Forest Is Latest Artist in de Forest Family.”

“You see a spark”
:
Witmer, “Ordinary Children, Extraordinary Talents.”

“Sometimes I wish”
:
Autumn de Forest, Autumn de Forest Art Fans, Facebook, June 11, 2012.

“fancy deer”
:
Autumn's words at the time as recalled by Doug de Forest.

“My spirit was on fire”
:
Moore and Taylor, “11-Year-Old Painter Autumn de Forest Spills What It's Like to Be an Art Prodigy.”

She sold
Paradise
:
Information about Autumn's art sales provided by Doug de Forest.

“an old lady in a young”
:
The Wendy Williams Show,
backstage conversation, clip available on Autumn's Web site.

“a pistol”
:
“Eight-Year-Old Girl Dazzles Art World,”
Today,
Oct. 14, 2010.

In one interview
:
Tempesta, “Child Prodigy Autumn de Forest on Painting and Being One of Aéropostale's Epic Kids.”

The prodigies' average overall IQ score
:
For more information on the prodigies' cognitive profiles, see Joanne Ruthsatz, Kimberly Ruthsatz-Stephens, and Kyle Ruthsatz, “The Cognitive Bases of Exceptional Abilities in Child Prodigies by Domain: Similarities and Differences,”
Intelligence
44 (2014): 11–14.

There was only one real
:
If you drop that child's score, the range for working memory was 132–158.

fluid reasoning
:
“Frequently Asked Questions About the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales, Fifth Edition,” Thomson Nelson.

Same story with
:
For more information on what each of these subtests is intended to measure, see Joel W. Schneider and Kevin S. McGrew, “The Cattell-Horn-Carroll Model of Intelligence,” in
Contemporary Intellectual Assessment,
3rd ed., ed. Dawn P. Flanagan and Patti L. Harrison (New York: Guilford Press, 2012); and Dawn P. Flanagan and Shauna G. Dixon, “The Cattell-Horn-Carroll Theory of Cognitive Abilities,” in
Encyclopedia of Special Education,
ed. Cecil R. Reynolds, Kimberly J. Vannest, and Elaine Fletcher-Janzen (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2013). For information as to which subtests are rooted in which Cattell-Horn-Carroll cognitive abilities, see Henry L. Janzen, John E. Obrzut, and Christopher W. Marusiak, “Test Review: Roid, G. H. (2003). Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales, Fifth Edition (SB:V). Itasca, Ill.: Riverside Publishing,”
Canadian Journal of School Psychology
19, nos. 1 and 2 (Dec. 2004): 235–44.

prodigious skill in science
:
Feldman and Morelock, “Prodigies and Savants.”

They had an average score
:
Some researchers have suggested that musical practice may improve working memory. See, for example, Sissela Bergman Nutley, Fahimeh Darki, and Torkel Klingberg, “Music Practice Is Associated with Development of Working Memory During Childhood and Adolescence,”
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
7 (2014).

“seeing with the mind's eye”
:
For more on mental imagery, see Stephen Michael Kosslyn,
Image and Brain: The Resolution of the Imagery Debate
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996).

A
spatial visualizer's
mental imagery
:
Some argue that spatial visualization should be further broken down into spatial location and mental transformation. See William L. Thompson et al., “Two Forms of Spatial Imagery: Neuroimaging Evidence,”
Psychological Science
20, no. 10 (2009): 1245–53.

A 1985 study
:
David N. Levine, Joshua Warach, and Martha Farah, “Two Visual Systems in Mental Imagery: Dissociation of ‘What' and ‘Where' in Imagery Disorders Due to Bilateral Posterior Cerebral Lesions,”
Neurology
35, no. 7 (1985): 1010–18.

The Stanford-Binet
:
Janzen, Obrzut, and Marusiak, “Test Review: Roid, G. H. (2003).”