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Sudden Savant Syndrome

Tribble

Tribble

Killjoy Boffin
Joined
Apr 21, 2015
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There're various types of sudden savants. Some claim to acquire ESP, like Peter Hurkos who apparently became psychic after injuring his head when falling from a ladder.
 
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Not sure this is the best place for this but it seems you don't need to bash your head.

Years ago I used to play guitar - or - more accurately I desperately tried to. I spent a huge amount of time going nowhere and no amount of practice or equipment helped. I sucked.

Fast forward 25 years. I changed my living room around and thought a cool looking wall hanger guitar would be nice given the retro decor choice. Got one, played it for laughs and it's like I'm a rock star! I'm not kidding. It's like my sub conscious never stopped trying. It's not just that I'm physically more able, it's also like scales, licks and rhythm just happen. I can now just listen to music and replicate it.

People who know me are kind of shocked by it, but y'know it's just one of those things.

I like it!
 
Roland Deschain said:
It's like my sub conscious never stopped trying.
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That's probably right - perhaps you were on the point of 'getting it' when you gave up? Makes sense to me as I've had something similar.

A few years ago I accompanied my son to CERN near Geneva to help him find a flat and look around the area ready for when he moved out there. I found myself speaking near-fluent French, and understanding everything said to me, to the extent that we had everything done in two days instead of the 4 that we'd planned.

French was one of my best subjects at school, 40 years before, but I'd never used it since or conversed in French. Here though I was able to sort him a bank account, set up a flat rental and understand directions and instructions, all in French. We had a grand time!

Escet would stare in awe as I made the arrangements in French.

It was like the Mother Ship scene in Close Encounters! :atom:

So yeah, I think you're spot-on, and will add that our human brains are AWESOME.
 
I've had this all my life. It occurs somewhere between the third and fifth pints, or after a third of a bottle of JD.
 
I've just been watching this documentary on savants

 
Roland Deschain said:
... a cool looking wall hanger guitar ...
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choice of guitar can be a huge factor, elsewhere ive mentioned an old hofner senator i used to own which played like a dream and was a full on song writing machine ... i stupidly sold it on in 2011, ive had many guitars since, none came close or provided a flash of what that old senator effortlessly achieved ... i recently tried to (again) reacquire, no dice
 
Roland Deschain said:
Not sure this is the best place for this but it seems you don't need to bash your head.

Years ago I used to play guitar - or - more accurately I desperately tried to. I spent a huge amount of time going nowhere and no amount of practice or equipment helped. I sucked.

Fast forward 25 years. I changed my living room around and thought a cool looking wall hanger guitar would be nice given the retro decor choice. Got one, played it for laughs and it's like I'm a rock star! I'm not kidding. It's like my sub conscious never stopped trying. It's not just that I'm physically more able, it's also like scales, licks and rhythm just happen. I can now just listen to music and replicate it.

People who know me are kind of shocked by it, but y'know it's just one of those things.

I like it!
Click to expand...


That's amazing :) Makes me wonder about trying the piano again. I tried teaching myself about 7 or 8 years ago but because I couldn't read music I had to painstakingly work out each note, memorise it, then move onto the next one, building up my ability to play the tune a bit at a time.*

In this way I actually managed to learn to play a section of a Genesis song (Firth of Forth) - I found the sheet music online and over the course of several days I built it up until I could play the entire section. :D I was quite proud of that.

After that I could play it off by heart, and at times when I left it for a while and went back, I found that I couldn't remember consciously how to do it, but if I started playing the notes I could remember, my fingers would suddenly know what they were doing and I could play the whole thing as long as I didn't think about it too much.

It's been a few years, and brain fog has started to slightly affect my short-term memory and concentration, so I've been afraid to attempt it again because I'm not sure whether I'd still have the ability to 'hold' each note on the sheet music in memory while I move onto the next one, etc., like I did before.


*It really was a very tedious way of learning...
- look at the first note in the first bar
- count the number of lines or spaces it was on to find which letter it was (and gawd help me if it was one of those notes that floated several spaces above the stave)
- find the corresponding note on the piano and play it
- look at the next note in the bar and work out which letter it was by counting the lines/spaces again
- find that note on the piano
- remember both notes at once and play them in sequence
- find the third note.... etc....
:crazy:
 
henry said:
choice of guitar can be a huge factor, elsewhere ive mentioned an old hofner senator i used to own which played like a dream and was a full on song writing machine ... i stupidly sold it on in 2011, ive had many guitars since, none came close or provided a flash of what that old senator effortlessly achieved ... i recently tried to (again) reacquire, no dice
Click to expand...
I had to look that up, and they look beautiful. My wall hanger got swiftly changed for a PRS custom 24 SE so I know what you mean about playability.
 
not to detract in any way, sounds like you got your mojo workin
 
Before Wayne Sheppard was laid low by a stroke at the age of 45 he couldn’t draw for toffee.


Now he spends at least ten hours a day creating eye-catching pictures – some of which he has sold for up to £400 apiece.

...

In a further twist, Wayne, who was born in Cape Town, South Africa, suddenly found his accent going haywire in early in 2017.


He said: “I woke up and started speaking in this weird language, almost like tongues. Throughout the day it slowly turned into this weird mix of Northern Irish, Welsh and Scouse, which I still have now.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/man-left-brain-damaged-after-13065887
 
Yes, I’m the artist! I’m new here & somehow confused on as to where I can post publicly! Thanks & sorry, was a error
 
Brain Injury Turns Man Into Maths Genius

From 2014:

The remarkable story of Jason Padgett who changed from party animal to maths phenomenon after a severe beating by two men at a club. Post attack he saw the world in a radically different way as maths equations & fractals & is one of around only 15 -20 people worldwide adjudged to have 'Acquired Savant Syndrome' - most 'savants' are born with the condition. He developed OCD & became reclusive but eventually got himself more together.

He describes his vision as "discrete picture frames with a line connecting them, but still at real speed." If you think of vision as the brain taking pictures all the time and smoothing them into a video, it's as though Padgett sees the frames without the smoothing. In addition, "everything has a pixilated look," he said.

With Padgett's new vision came an astounding mathematical drawing ability. He started sketching circles made of overlapping triangles, which helped him understand the concept of pi, the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. There's no such thing as a perfect circle, he said, which he knows because he can always see the edges of a polygon that approximates the circle.

p0765cgw.jpg

After his injury, Padgett was drawing complex geometric shapes, but he didn't have the formal training to understand the equations they represented. One day, a physicist spotted him making these drawings in a mall, and urged him to pursue mathematical training. Now Padgett is a sophomore in college and an aspiring number theorist.

Padgett's remarkable abilities garnered the interest of neuroscientists who wanted to understand how he developed them.

Berit Brogaard, a philosophy professor now at the University of Miami, in Coral Gables, Florida, and her colleagues scanned Padgett's brain with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to understand how he acquired his savant skills and the synesthesia that allows him to perceive mathematical formulas as geometric figures.

The resulting scans showed significant activity in the left hemisphere of Padgett's brain, where mathematical skills have been shown to reside. His brain lit up most strongly in the left parietal cortex, an area behind the crown of the head that is known to integrate information from different senses. There was also some activation in parts of his temporal lobe (involved in visual memory, sensory processing and emotion) and frontal lobe (involved in executive function, planning and attention).
Click to expand...
A 2019 BBC article here.
 
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