Eureka! When a blow to the head creates a sudden genius
May 20, 2012 | Source: The Atlantic
Dubai Panorama (credit: Stephen Wiltshire)
How can we explain “acquired savants” — people with extraordinary talent who’ve miraculously developed artistic, musical, or mathematical abilities as a result of a brain injury, or temporarily from a transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) session — since they weren’t born with the talent and didn’t learn it later?
For example, how is it that somebody like Derek Amato (video below), who’d never demonstrated any musical talent before hitting his head at the bottom of a pool, could suddenly handle jazz and classical pieces of astounding complexity without training?
Darold A. Treffert, M.D., Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and consultant for the movie Rain Man, speculates that it could be the result of what he calls “genetic memory” (“ancestral memory”) that is triggered by rewiring of the brain to compensate for the injury.
See also:
Savant Syndrome (Darold Treffert website)
Islands of Genius: The Bountiful Mind of the Autistic, Acquired, and Sudden Savant, Darold Treffert and Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2011
“Ancestral” or “Genetic” Memory: Factory Installed Software Darold Treffert, 2011
Conversations on Creativity with Darold Treffert, Psychology Today, April 27, 2011 (open access)
Augmenting Cognition, Idan Segev and Henry Markram, EFPL Press, 2011
While the article in The Atlantic does not cover new findings, it summarizes some of the key ideas well. — Ed.
Comments (12)
by Phil Tyson
Do the atoms of our pyshical being remember the stars they were born in?
by PacRim Jim
Perhaps so much is destroyed that what’s left become hyper-developed, like hearing in a blind person.
by jonathan
Refer to Assassin’s Creed’s Animous for reference
by Dylan
“Cellular memory is a proven fact. See Depak Chopra…”
lol. Too funny.
by George
This phenomenon has always intrigued me. I knew personally, a man who had no musical training who awoke from a dream and began playing the piano and composing music professionally. His name was Roland Matson and he lived in Georgetown, CT until his death in the 1990s. He was creative in many other ways, but his abilities were truly amazing and he never knew how or why this talent occurred.
by Boristabby
Cellular memory is a proven fact. See Depak Chopra, MD, for details. The entire body is brain stuff made up of cells, just a convenience for eating (gaining energy), reproducing the species, and moving about to achieve these two goals.
Beatriz Valdes’ insight is totally valid. Envision 200K generations of Homo development, from Homo Whatever through to Homo Sapiens, at approximately 20 years per generation, (Prox 4 million years in archeological terms) with parents passing along their experiences (cells) by way of egg and fertilization (updated monthly) to their offspring, experiences that the parents lived up to the time that they produced their progeny, coupled with inherited experience. 200,000 generations and probably many more , think of it. The brain area observed by brain scientists during (f)MRI that is active when god-type concepts are received/comtemplated (I call this the god-spot) would be/contain the accumulated “mysteries” of the experiences of each individual, multiplied by the 200K conceptions of progeny … a cornucopia of experience … all there is, really …do’s and dont’s … who brought the thunder and lightinng? … why did my companion die?… who am I? … why?, what?, how? … all the accumulated memories which then result in human wisdom that can be accessed through quiet comtemplation, often refered to as meditation. The Eastern expression, “millions of lifetimes” the ‘million’ being poetic license, must therefore refer to the thousands of generations of human experiences being passed along to progeny, but not, certainly, millions of prior lives of today’s John and Jane Doe individually. If parents cannot pass along characteristics, where did you doubters get those beautiful blue eyes, those tendencies to athleticism, that sense of humor, etc., etc., those qualities that make you unique among us 7 billion planet earthlings. Please, start Googling on these topics and revel in your opportunities for greatness.
by Dylan
This is utter nonsense. How do we explain it? It’s a hoax.
by Reggie
That being said, the newly acquired abilities more than likely ARE a result of a network-wide change in how the information is processed in association cortices. However, we know so little about how robust the brain is as an adaptive system. The information streams are so similar across populations. The resulting structural convergence gives rise to potentially incorrect conclusions.
by Reggie
I believe it is a mistake to say outright that genetic memory does not exist. On a large scale, humanity has a history that it leaves behind beyond what is written or spoken. That history consists of waste and byproducts of our existence. The same can be said of cells. When cells divide, proteins do not just die . The cells resulting from mitotic splitting still contain remnants of proteins that effect the synthesis of subsequent proteins and macromolecules.
by None
There’s no such thing as genetic memory. Why would Kurzweil AI even report on something like this?
by Brett Guillory
“Genetic memory” sounds like woowoo bullshit. More likely it’s due simply to a change in the direction of processing of information due to the plastic structure of the brain having to severely compensate for damage elsewhere.
by Beatriz Valdes
Genetic memory… if there really is such a thing, then this could be related to the claims of re-encarnations being made for a long time by Hindi and Buddist followers.