Talent or Brain Damage?

[AutumnW]

Talent or brain damage, or is there no clear distinction?

In most cases, scientists attribute enhanced brain activity to neuroplasticity, the organ's ability to devote more cortical real estate to developing skills as they improve with practice.

But Miller offered a wholly different hypothesis for the mechanisms at work in congenital and acquired savants. Savant skills, Miller argues, emerge because the areas ravaged by disease—those associated with logic, verbal communication, and comprehension—have actually been inhibiting latent artistic abilities present in those people all along.

As the left brain goes dark, the circuits keeping the right brain in check disappear. The skills do not emerge as a result of newly acquired brain power; they emerge because for the first time, the areas of the right brain associated with creativity can operate unchecked.

https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-02/when-brain-damage-unlocks-genius-within/

Did your Mom drop you on your head when you were a baby, and...was it a good thing? My father fell down the stairs with me when I was a newborn. I still have the tiny scars on my chin and I probably have some on the back of my head.

As far as I know, I don't have brain damage from it....but, you never know. You have to wonder how much even the mildest brain trauma contributes to personality and the type of intellectual, emotional and artistic development any one of us possesses.

[Strat]

I've always been fascinated by this. This guy has a neat story, I discovered him while researching Kim Peek (the real rainman) and Daniel Tammet.
xgrmoVWxTlY

[Did You See Them]

One of my favourite quotes is the title of one of Salvador Dali's papers/manifestos

"A declaration of the independence of the imagination and the rights of man to his own madness"

There is no such thing as a "sane" person - we are all "touched" in one way or another !

[Ernie Nemeth]

I knew a girl with a photographic memory. She could remember every word she had ever read, the book, page number, line and each word! (I suppose it was not exactly word for word but she could recite long passages from the page.)

Yet, she could not understand the simplest things, unless it was explained from a book she'd previously read.

Would that be a mild example of this?

[AutumnW]

I knew a girl with a photographic memory. She could remember every word she had ever read, the book, page number, line and each word! (I suppose it was not exactly word for word but she could recite long passages from the page.)

Yet, she could not understand the simplest things, unless it was explained from a book she'd previously read.

Would that be a mild example of this?

She had a very unusual brain which could denfinitely have been the product of a prior physical trauma.

[Ernie Nemeth]

She was a gem, no idea what has happened to her...I should find out.

I had the very best talks with her. She tested my skills early on, and I learned that although I did not have the breadth of her information, I did have a firm grasp of the basics. And although I did not have all the data, my deductive reasoning was fairly accurate.

I could easily hold my own against her prodigious talent. I am a collector of one-off facts, exceptions that make it possible to refute a lot of the standard thinking of today. In those early days I was not sure how accurate my collection was or how far along they could push the new narrative I was working on. She confirmed one after the other of my collection, calling up books and reference papers she had read that seemed to add weight to them, fleshing them out. I filed all that info for future use.

There would be others, as there had been those before, that would help solidify my stance. But her contribution was a miracle. It was like having a computer at my fingertips before computers existed. She was my personal google for a good two years!

She was a really important person in my life.

[AutumnW]

Ernie,

Sounds like the two of you were a formidable team! Do you mind me asking what you were working on at the time?

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I've always been fascinated by this. This guy has a neat story, I discovered him while researching Kim Peek (the real rainman) and Daniel Tammet.
xgrmoVWxTlY

Totally fascinating! Thanks Strat.

[AutumnW]

Danniel Tammet:

He suffered a brain injury at four years old

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxVpQ485Vx8

[AutumnW]

Born without a brain. Has grown a brain since then-- Such a cute alert little boy too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPZ9Yc7U0Pc

[Ernie Nemeth]

Hi Autumn.

We were looking at the discrepancies in the various areas of science and the inconsistencies that refute the standard model. I was personally looking for a new breakthrough in scientific understanding that would free the peoples of the world from the grips of the tyrants who control our every choice.

Years later I would find it but would not be at all happy with it, as it turned out to be not a scientific breakthrough but an interpersonal breakthrough, a spiritual reawakening that would cause more trouble than it solved...

And since then I have come to realize that the scientific breakthrough I was waiting for was purposely being withheld from the public and was being developed in secret by these same global tyrants.

I've not been the same since. Left out of the covert progress in advanced technologies and ill equipped to make any spiritual headway, I find myself bereft of a mission in life.

But I also realize that without the lofty mission early in life, I probably would have ended this farce long ago...but I kept hoping I could make a difference - I couldn't...so sorry everyone.