savant
/saˈvän(t),säˈvän(t)/
noun
a learned person, especially a distinguished scientist.
Savant comes from the Latin word for “to be wise” or sapere. In French, savant is the word for “learned”. It’s less of a “what” and more of a “who”.
A savant in the context of neuroscience is someone with significant mental disabilities, often with an IQ score less than 70, that excel to “genius” levels of a particular field.
Typically, savants excel in activities that are related to memory. This superior memory can manifest itself in the form of mathematical calculations at high speeds, artistic ability, or musical ability. Usually, they will only have one of these special skills.
The most common form of a savant is an autistic savant, which is someone that has this savant syndrome (which isn’t actually recognized as a mental disorder with the DSM-5 diagnostic system) in addition to autism. Being a savant is extremely rare with 1 in a million people having it and with 1 in 10 to 1 in 200 autistic patients having the syndrome to a certain degree. They estimate that there are less than a hundred savants that have the full extent of syndrome or have these extremely extraordinary skills that are currently still living.
Scientists don’t yet know why savants are a combination of extreme talent in some areas and intellectual disability in all else. There have been various neurological and psychological hypotheses presented with no clear outcome. One possible explanation is that those with autism typically focus on detailed processing and it predisposes them to savant-like talents. Or that their sensory hypersensitivity is simply more excessive in savants than in standard autistics. Other hypotheses suggest that savants directly access low-level, less-processed information that all humans have but that are not available to a neurotypical person’s conscious awareness.
Another argues that there really is no such thing as “genius” like capabilities, rather the hyper-systematizing ability of these patients gives off the impression of talent. Hyper-systematizing classifies people based on their skills in empathizing with others versus systematizing facts about the external world. But it is unclear how likely this is as autistic children are not known for their ability to empathize or relate with others.
From a neurological perspective, researchers believe that being a savant may be linked to the left anterior temporal lobe, where sound is processed and auditory language and speech comprehension systems are present. The symptoms of savant syndrome can be induced due to severe trauma to this region, which may suggest that being a savant is linked to these regions. Scientists are continuing to search for the answer as to what causes such a small population of the world to be savants.
Artistic savants are even rarer than just savants in general. The more common form of the savant syndrome is with the calendar where the person can name the day of the week of a date in a fraction of second over a range of decades or millennia. It may not seem like a useful skill, but it is still an unbelievable one. One of the most high profile artistic savants is Stephen Wiltshire. He is a British architectural artist who is the most famous autistic artist in the world. He can draw entire cities with immense detail from memory and in a short amount of time. Wiltshire was also awarded the Member of the Order of the British Empire for his contributions to art. It was seeing his work that interested me in the cross-section between art and autism. This is the link to see Wiltshire in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1O_TMTc660.
Savants are a rare group of people, but an extraordinary one that science should continue to study.
This is one of Wiltshire’s pictures: An Aerial View of City of London
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