Savant Syndrome

In class today we got in a random discusion about savant syndrome and I was curious. Savant syndrome is extremely rare, but is a condition in which people with autism, or other serious mental handicaps or major mental illness, have amazing abilities or brilliance that stand out in contrast to their overall disability.  A lot of researcheres believe that savant syndrome is caused by an injury to the left side of the brain and then the right side compensates for the loss. The abitlities show after the left brain has been damaged by any blow to the head or trauma. The first recorded case of savant syndrome was in 1789, a severely mentally handicapped named Thomas Fuller who diwas able to do lightning fast calculating. Like when he was asked how long a man had lived who was 70 years, 17 days and 12 hours old, he gave the correct answer after 90 seconds, even including the 17 leap years. And yet Fuller wasn't able to comprehend scarcely anything. Savant syndrome was first recognised by Dr. J. Langdon Down in 1887 as idiot savant. 
Later the term idiot was removed because not all cases fitted the term and was replaced with syndrome to fit all cases. 

I also came across this discusion this summer in my medical camp and we atlked about  savant who had the ability to redraw major cities after an hour helicopter ride. In this video he was able to redraw Rome after 45 minutes of looking at it from above (with very minor errors).


That's pretty amazing. Please share your thoughts and feelings.