Have you ever heard of Savants?

I often say “we live in an amazing and breathtaking world”. Everyday there are numerous opportunities to prove that. Recently I watched a documentary on savant syndrome and thought I might share a few thoughts with you.

Savants are people with exceptional mental abilities. And I mean really exceptional. We have learned to cope with teleportation, space travel, enormous size of the universe, UFO’s and accepted those amazing things as a normal parts of our lives. But trying to understand what is really happening in a mind of a person suffering from savant syndrome is far out of at least my reach. I said “suffering from” as it is medical term, but I really think “gifted with”.

Most savants have experienced some kind of accident in the early age. A head injury or a strong epileptic seizure. The accident triggered something amazing, something extraordinary. It opened a doorway to fantastic and often unimaginable abilities.

Daniel Tammet, a numbers and languages savant, recited mathematical number PI (you know the one 3.14159…) on March 14th last year to 22,500 decimals. It took him a week to learn 22,500 digits of a number and about five hours to recite it. I bet most of the people wouldn’t have the nerve to read 22,500 digits of a number from a paper, let alone memorize it without a single mistake. Daniel also learned one of the most complicated languages in the world, Icelandic, in a single week and appeared on Iceland’s national TV. And he is one of the rare savants that does not have negative side-effects to his brilliance, like autism. Daniel looks like a normal guy, he is very polite and well spoken and you would not notice anything unusual with him.Watch truly inspiring video about Daniel.

Kim Peek is one of the most famous savants, and he was the inspiration behind the Oscar winning “Rainman” with Dustin Hoffman. Kim is gifted with photographic memory and has read and remembered more then 10,000 books. If there was a man in the world smarter then Google, it would be him. It is incredible to see not only his amazing abilities but also an amazing emotional relation with his father. Kim said once a truly touching sentence “my dad and I share the same shadow”.

Here is the amazing Kim Peek Video.

Alonzo Clemons is a savant that creates incredible sculptures. What he does is take a piece of clay and model any animal to perfection.

Watch a video about Alonzo.

Information on how many savants are there in the world is quite scarce. Estimates are only around 25. They are gifted with different abilities like amazing memory, music talent or artistic skill. Mechanism of the savant syndrome condition is still poorly understood by science. Experts believe that we all have similar talents but they become overlayed with more complex skills such is language.

So where are the boundaries of human mind? Nobody knows for certain and it is people like Daniel, Kim and Alonzo that truly exploring worlds no man has really gone before.

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