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Questions tagged [savant-syndrome]

A condition in which people with developmental delays (notably autism spectrum) or brain injury demonstrate some profound abilities far in excess of typical individuals.

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Does LATL damage impair one's ability to see the bigger picture?

It is the theory of Allan Snyder that the underlying mechanism of savantism is an access to "lower-level, less-processed information, before its packaged into holistic concepts and meaningful ...
A. Kvåle's user avatar
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Is there a mechanism behind savantism shared by all savant cases (both congenital and acquired)?

Kim Peek (the real-life inspiration for Raymond Babbitt in Rain Man) had a spectacular case of savantism. He also had disabilities, like missing his corpus callosum and anterior commissure, leaving ...
A. Kvåle's user avatar
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The full range of implications of LATL damage

I'm studying the phenomenon of acquired savant syndrome, and the literature I've read till now frames it as such (not a quote, just my understanding): Savant syndrome occurs when the left anterior ...
A. Kvåle's user avatar
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Can autistic savants beat computers in known computationally hard problems?

I'm always amazed when the exceptional mathematical skills of some autistic-savant people hit the news. My question is: can they outperform a computer in problems which we believe too hard for even a ...
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Why do some people undergo sudden savant syndrome?

According to https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/brain-gain-a-person-can-instantly-blossom-into-a-savant-and-no-one-knows-why/, sometimes somebody suddenly becomes a savant. I don't know ...
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Has "induced savantism" been further explored beyond Snyder 2009?

The Mechanism/Neurological subsection of the Wikipedia article Savant Syndrome says: Savant syndrome results from damage to the left anterior temporal lobe, an area of the brain key in processing ...
uhoh's user avatar
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Does savant people have an Higher/Lower Working Memory?

I have searched a lot about the Working Memory Capacity and savant or eidetic people but I can´t find a paper which describes a correlation between savant/eidetic people and the working memory ...
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Why are autistic people more likely to be savants than nonautistic people?

I read that 10% of autistic people and 1% of nonautistic people are savants. It seems like lacking an ability is what defines somebody to be autistic.
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What's the percentage of people that are mental calculator prodigies?

I want to reply to this comment: What's the percentage of people that are mental calculator prodigies? How do they spread over the different parts of the world?
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How far can we train mental calculation?

Mental calculators are people with a prodigious ability in some area of mental calculation, such as multiplying large numbers or factoring large numbers. Unfortunately I forgot where I heard it, but ...
draks ...'s user avatar
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How are autistic savants able to perform certain mathematical computations so quickly?

How do autistic savants (or other people with these abilities) compute equations like $81^{100}$ in 2.5 minutes? Which algorithms do they use? Is it an efficient one, or do they just have a lot of ...
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How do the brains of savants such as Orlando Serrell and Temple Grandin compare to a standard brain?

There are the examples of Orlando Serrell and Temple Grandin, who remember quite a lot, due to autism. How do their brains compare to a standard brain? See also: Partitions and Volume:
draks ...'s user avatar
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7 votes
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Savant syndrome and Cognitive bias

Take the case of an autistic savant with exceptional memory skills. Is this person less prone to cognitive biases involving memory skills such as availability heuristic bias than a normal person due ...
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1 answer
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What are the purported mechanisms of eidetic memory and why is it comorbid with autism?

Eidetic memory, often called "photographic" or "flashbulb" memory, is often associated with amazing feats of recall. Is the mechanism behind this phenomenon an aberration of the visualization of a ...
Chuck Sherrington's user avatar