Synaesthesia and savantism
“We only use 10% of our brain”. I don’t know where that idea originated but it certainly took off as a popular meme – taxi drivers seem particularly taken with it. It’s rubbish of course – you use more than that just to see. But it captures an idea that we humans have untapped intellectual potential – that in each of us individually, or at least in humans in general lies the potential for genius. Part of what has fed into that idea is the existence of so-called “savants” – people who have some isolated area of special intellectual ability far beyond most other individuals. Common examples of savant abilities include prodigious mental calculations, calendar calculations and remarkable feats of memory. These can arise due to brain injuries, or be apparently congenital. In congenital cases, savant abilities are often encountered against a background of the general intellectual, social or communicative symptoms of autism. (The portrayal by Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man is a good exam...