posted on Jul, 3 2005 @ 11:28 AM
“Sometimes the ability of a savant is so striking, it eventually makes news. The most famous savant was a man called Joseph, the individual Dustin
Hoffman drew upon for his character in the 1988 movie Rain Man. Joseph could immediately answer this question: "What number times what number gives
1,234,567,890?" His answer was "Nine times 137,174,210." Another savant could double 8,388,628 up to 24 times within several seconds, yielding the
sum 140,737,488,355,328. A 6-year-old savant named Trevor listened to his older brother play the piano one day, then climbed onto the piano stool
himself and played it better. A savant named Eric could find what he called the "sweet spot" in a room full of speakers playing music, the spot
where sound waves from the different sources hit his ears at exactly the same time.”
There are many skills that savants have, some of which are not listed above. They may not be able to function in society, but in their one area of
specialty, they are vastly superior to the average person. Their brains see only the raw, uninterpreted data of things, while normal people make
thousands of connections to see the big picture which is where much of our brain power goes to. This is how savants have these incredible abilities.
They have brain power to spare and that power is used to perform these amazing feats of the mind. So what if it was possible to tap into this ability?
If a normal person could have not one, but many savant-like abilities when needed for help inventing something, memorizing material, performing
calculations, or any other of a variety of functions. This is now being thought of something that is possible in the near future, and if made
possible, would have far-reaching impacts on the world.
“Allan Snyder, a vision researcher and award-winning physicist who is director of the Center for the Mind at the University of Sydney and the
Australian National University, has advanced a new explanation of such talents. "Each of us has the innate capacity for savantlike skills," says
Snyder, "but that mental machinery is unconscious in most people."
Continued……..