Savant Syndrome: What Savants Can Teach Us

As mental health month approaches veteran physician and scientific advisor, Dr. Bill Miller, discusses what those who suffer from a medical condition called savant syndrome can teach society. Miller questions what people should make of savantism beyond the wonder and natural curiosity such individuals invoke and reveals that research into their remarkable capacities might reveal a series of linked deeper truths about the nature of genetic interplay and evolutionary development that make us who we are.

Savant syndrome is exceedingly rare, but a remarkable condition in which persons with autism, or other serious mental illnesses, have astonishing islands of ability or brilliance that stand out in stark contrast to their overall disability. Savantism teaches us that our brain capacities are vastly richer than we had previously understood. However, there is an even larger message. Savants teach us that the full capacities of our genomes are well beyond what we observe as our natural endowment. He adds:

If this is true for the brain, might it not be true for other bodily systems?

When Seattle man, Jason Padgett, walked into a bar for a drink a few years ago, he was an ordinary man with seemingly average intelligence

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