Savant Syndrome: How Brain Damage Can Unlock The Genius Within

In 2015, I wrote about my personal philosophy of the gifted learner. I stated in my paper that, “Giftedness is not a one, set definition. The definition of gifted must encompass intellect, ability, creative talent as well as emotional awareness. It cannot be micro-managed and be a “one size fits all” definition” (Dauber, 2015). People, who are gifted, need differentiation and opportunity to express, demonstrate and show their giftedness. Educators must be able to provide opportunities for the gifted learner to express his/her abilities and/or talents. Gifted students learn differently and require special educational experiences in order to grow academically and achieve their highest potential. Therefore, the education field must be able to understand not only the cognitive side of a gifted learner but the affective or social/emotional aspects too.

Have you ever thought about being smart? Well, Charlie Gordon did. Charlie Gordon is a 37 year old male with an I.Q. that is not very high. In the Science FIction story “Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel keyes. Charlie Gordon wasn’t very smart, he has a low I.Q. of 68. Charlie wanted to be smart so he would be liked by people. Charlie had the opportunity to have the A.I. surgery to triple his I.Q. Charlie Gordon should have had the A.I. surgery.

In this novel, Flowers for Algernon, written by Daniel Keyes, a man named Charlie Gordon has an operation done to increase his intelligence. He started as a mentally retarded man and slowly became a genius. He seemed to soak up information like a sponge and he was able to figure out the most complex scientific formulas. The only problem with the operation is that it does not last for ever and in his remaining time he tries to figure out why it is not permanent. He will eventually lose everything he learned and become worse off than when he started, so Charlie was better off before he had the operation.

Boys are two times more likely than girls to receive such a diagnosis. (King, 2013).

These prodigies, who had reached professional status at a very young age had varying theories of causation ranging from nurture to nature. The results indicated they had elevated level of intelligence, working memory and attention to detail. Interestingly, however, their family pedigrees showed an over-representation of relatives with autism. This indicates a potential commonality between child prodigies and savants genetically leading to the conclusion that child prodigies possess a form of autism but suppress typical signs.

According to “savant” (2002), savant syndrome is someone with extreme skills at one particular area and are also mentally challenged or autistic. Edelson says that out of the one percent of people that are autistic only ten percent of those have savant syndrome. People with the syndrome usually only have a narrow set of incredible abilities such as multiplication problems that no one else can possibly do in their head, knowing what happened on a specific day twenty years ago, or crazy artistic and musical skills. “savant “ (2002) says that there is no exact evidence to explain how savants can do these things but researchers believe that there could be damage to the left side of the brain and that the right side of the brain compensates for the damage. Testosterone is also believed to be involved with the fetal development of the syndrome. This leading to a lot more males than females developing savant

Have you ever wanted to know several languages, be able to learn everything easily, or even have an IQ of at least 200? Charlie Gordon, in the story “Flowers for Algernon,” was a man who had an IQ of 68, but he went through a surgery that made him smarter than his own teacher at a school for the mentally challenged, and his own doctors. Charlie’s IQ was tripled after the surgery once he began to practice different languages as well as the English language. Charlie soon reverted to his former self at the end of the story, and this tripled intelligence that he possessed once before was soon back to the IQ of 68 Charlie had it easier in life after the surgery.

Savants are individuals who have notable inventive or intellectual skills although they may possess severe mental or physical inability. Orlando Serrell is a 10-year-old boy who developed a mysterious skill to perform complicated mathematical calculations. Orlando was hit on the left side of his head while he was playing baseball with his friends. Ever since his accident, Orlando is just not able to perform the complex mathematical calculations, but he is also able to remind the weather, his location, and what he does each day. Therefore, researchers consider Orlando an acquired savant because of his extraordinary abilities. The Wisconsin psychiatrist Darold Treffert has recorded 330 from all over the world, and only 30 of them are acquired

Imagine being three times smarter than you already are through a simple, painless surgery, but there’s a catch. The effects of the surgery that can make you a genius could be temporary, and have not been studied and may be dangerous. Flowers for Algernon, a short story, describes a character who is intellectually disabled. He has to make a choice between having doctors conduct an experiment that involves surgery on him to make him three times smarter or staying the way he is. Charlie Gordon should not have the surgery because it is highly experimental and theoretical, as well as the negative social effects.

Chapter Three The Trouble with Geniuses, part 1 by Malcolm Gladwell. This chapter describes the threshold to intelligence and explains that the domain of intelligence is only good up to a degree by which the author describes. The chapter goes on to discuss a very intelligent person named Christopher Lanagan. It tells how Lanagan was on a television show and earned a lot of money for answering questions.

Fragile X Syndrome was identified in the year 1991. This disability affects more males than females. Approximately 1 in 4,000 males are affected, however only 1 in 8,000 females are affected (Lombroso, 2003). Fragile X generates in the FMR1 gene. Fragile X is caused by an excessively repeating tri-nucleotide,

In savants the encounters of impressive abilities are always linked to extraordinary memory. This one of a kind memory is very impressive, but only within a very narrow area. For example, a savant may be able to memories the dictionary, but ask that same person a simple math question, they would be puzzled to figure it out. "The skills often associated with savant syndrome are the ability to play the piano beautifully, meaning complex pieces one would need months to learn by ear alone", (Howe 955). Being able to give a day of the week from any past or future date, and solving complex math problems extremely fast are also common feats performed by savants. "Another interesting skill some savants' possess is the perfect appreciation of time without the knowledge of a clock."(Howe 956)

Savant syndrome is extremely rare, but people with autism are more likely to have savant than people without autism. If your parents have autism, you are 5% more likely to have a form of autism (DSM, 2000 p 73). Yet, only 10% of people with autism will have some form of savant and less than 1% of non-autistic people have savant (Stephen M. Edelson, Ph.D.). Although savant syndrome is extremely rare, autism is

Statistics have also shown that brain fag syndrome is more common among men than women. However, this evidence is not valid because females were taken out of school at an early age. The females are too young to have been able to identify with having the syndrome. With that being said, there are more males in schools, so it is obvious that more males would be known to have this culture bound syndrome.

Through much study, scientists have found that in certain genetic conditions, gender does play a role. Evan Eichler is a geneticist at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle. Small studies had hinted that girls could endure far more harmful autism-linked mutations than boys before developing the disease. So he and colleagues decided to probe whether this association held up in a bigger group of people diagnosed with autism or with other disorders that trace to changes in how the brain develops. To do this, the team tapped into two large collections of genetic data. One came from more than 15,000 people with intellectual disabilities. A second came from 762 families, each with an autistic child. Eichler’s team suspects that parents of the kids in the two groups it studied had such mutations and then passed them along to their children. On average, females in both of the studied groups had more harmful mutations than did the males. This was true for large chunks of missing or repeated DNA as well as for small, single letter mutations. “No matter what class of mutation we looked at, females had more,” Eichler says. Consider