A savant is somebody that has a very special ability, but they are impaired in basic areas. There are three types of savant:
1.Talented/gifted savant: has a useful skill
2. Predigious Savant: a child prodigy fewer than 100 in the world, the one who knows things that he has never learned
3. General Savant: a person with a gift but that is not useful
For example, there is a prodigious savant who is physically and mentally disabled, but has memorized 90,000 books, and is able to read 500 pages an hour. He reads two pages at the same time, one with one eye and the other page with the other eye.
Another person that is a prodigious savant is George Widner, when he was brain scanned it showed that his brain uses different neurocircuits that we usually use for different tasks.
A savant can be born or created.
In the brain the Left hemisphere controls logic, and Right hemisphere controls creativity: the left hemisphere usually dominates, but in savants the right hemisphere dominates. This is probably because in the fetus the left hemisphere is probably damaged in formation because of the flood of testosterone.
Nadia is an autistic three year old she can draw beautifully, but when she learned language her ability was lost. These abilities may come back is there is brain damage, but they naturally will not come back.
Tommy Maccue had brain damage when two arteries in his brain collapsed and provoked hemorrhaged. This incident upset his frontal and temporal lobes which gave him creativity. He urges to paint all the time, and he writes poetry since the incident.
All of these are leading to new discoveries, for example an experiment was done that by using magnetic waves it slows down the left side of the brain which gives the person a chance to think without logic, so scientist can see that the person has a more aprochable abilities to the ones of the savants.
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