Paradox of the savant mind

Inside the mind of a savant.

D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 5 C R E D IT When J. Langdon Down first described savant syndrome in 1887, coining its name and noting its association with astounding powers of memory, he cited a patient who could recite Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire verbatim. Since then, in almost all cases, savant memory has been linked to a specific domain, such as music, art or mathematics....

The Bayesian Savant.

Computational psychiatry promises a fresh and formal approach to mental health, and autism has become its socalled poster child. Key concepts from computational neuroscience are now finding their way into discussions about the pathophysiology and psychopathology of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (1–4). This is exemplified beautifully by Sevgi et al. (5), who report that “higher autistic traits ...

Savant talent.

The notion of talent is an elusive concept but there appears to be sound evidence that both savants and experts share important qualities. Brief descriptive accounts of the talents displayed by savants are presented, along with a discussion of intelligence, implicit learning, and the organization of knowledge. Cognitive theories helpful in understanding exceptional abilities in people with auti...

Microbes Savant™

Naturally, the system suffers all of the omissions of ICD-9. For example, "AIDS" and "ARC" were not recognized, nor was "Acquired" exactly right for AIDS, because that gave me "acquired immunodeficiency-279.3." Not to worry, however; the program has a nice feature that lets you add diagnoses to the dictionary, so I added AIDS and ARC to the dictionary with fictitious codes, and they were immedi...

ON LANGUAGE SAVANTS AND THE STRUCTURE OF THE MIND A review of Neil Smith and Ianthi-Maria Tsimpli, "The mind of a savant: Language learning and modularity" by