Idiot savants or autistic savants are individuals with the savant syndrome condition are people who demonstrate above average super abilities and skills such as rapid calculation, artistic ability, map making and musical ability usually in the categories of art, memory, arithmetic, musical abilities and spatial skills. Savants usually have one special skill or super intelligence as a result of some mental disabilities or brain injuries. Some savants acquired super skills after an accident. For example, Derek Amato suffered an injury from diving into a swimming pool. After that, he discovered he was really good a playing piano.

Research on the savant syndrome
Dr Darrold Treffert, a psychiatrist in St. Agnes Hospital at Fond-du-lac, Wisconsin and the author of the books on autistic savants, Extraordinary People – Understanding Savant Syndrome and Islands of Genius: The Bountiful Mind of the Autistic, Acquired and Sudden Savant. Treffert was the first researcher to suggest that we all possess innate savant skills. In The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks writes about the calculating twins, George and Charles who entertained themselves by trading six-digit prime numbers with what Sacks described as “holy intensity.” in spite the fact that the twins were incapable of performing simple multiplication.

Can anyone acquire super abilities and skills? How can we release or tap into our dormant potential?
Professor Allan Snyder and Dr Elaine Mulcahy state they have completed experiments that showed they could develop the creative function of the brain using magnetism using Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) which can temporarily shut down the left hemisphere of the brain where speech and short-term memory are supported or other parts of the brain and simulate and stimulate development or acquiring of new skills in perfectly healthy humans. Researchers have noticed that music, math and other skills savants acquire easily are usually associated with the right side of the brain. They suggest that autistic savants have access to very fast, early brain, unconscious processing functions, for skills such as calculation and hand-to-eye coordination and visual skills. Snyder is an inventor of ‘thinking cap’ or ‘duns cap‘. Other ways to release our dormant savant potential or our inner genius (without the brain injury or autism) are electronic stimulation, pharmacological stimulation and brain boosters, medical intervention such as DNA editing, meditation, hypnosis, cognitive approaches and effort and ‘rummaging in the right hemisphere’.

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