Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, where we give you insights into the mind, brain,
Speaker 1: behavior and creativity. Each episode will feature a new guest
Speaker 1: who will stimulate your mind and give you a greater
Speaker 1: understanding of yourself, others, and the world we live in.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast today. It's my
Speaker 1: great pleasure to have a great Daryld Trefford on the show.
Speaker 1: Daryld is a psychiatrist who specializes in the development of
Speaker 1: autism spectrum disorders in savant syndrome. He is on the
Speaker 1: staff at Saint Agnes Hospital and serves on the board
Speaker 1: of Trustees of Marianne University. Trefford was a consultant to
Speaker 1: the movie rain Man and his latest book is Islands
Speaker 1: of Genius, The Bountiful Mind of the Autistic, Acquired and
Speaker 1: Sudden Savant. Thank you, Daryld for talking to me today.
Speaker 1: My pleasure to be here. As you know, I'm a
Speaker 1: longtime fan I you could say of your work and
Speaker 1: hopefully you'd consider me a colleague as well. Absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 1: why did you? I want to ask you why you
Speaker 1: called your book Islands of Genius. Well, it when I
Speaker 1: met my first savant, which was way back in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty two. I was simply astounded, frankly by these These
Speaker 1: first savants were kids on a children's unit. Some of
Speaker 1: them were severely disabled, and yet had these islands of
Speaker 1: intactnos or islands of genius at students such contrast overall handicap.
Speaker 1: It just seemed to me that the term island genius
Speaker 1: was appropriate for these tacular abilities in a sea of disability. Right.
Speaker 1: So there was just such a huge difference, striking contrast
Speaker 1: between what they seem to be having difficulties doing in
Speaker 1: life and in their their skill set and a different
Speaker 1: skill set that they seem to be very extraordinary. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: some of them were actually mute and had no language whatsoever,
Speaker 1: and yet I had some spectacular ability. And that just
Speaker 1: struck me that what does this say about human potential overall? Well, now,
Speaker 1: with the iPad and the talking tablet, we're finding that
Speaker 1: these kids who were mute and have no expressive language
Speaker 1: are able to communicate with the with the talking tablet,
Speaker 1: and some of them at a frankly an astonishing level,
Speaker 1: right Right, And I remember seeing a very touching video clip.
Speaker 1: I can't remember Phil was Leslie Lempke here or now
Speaker 1: it was? It was an autistic savant who was blind.
Speaker 1: He picked up the music very easily and he didn't talk,
Speaker 1: but he started singing one day. You know, he's playing
Speaker 1: music and his his caretaker was just like amazed, absolutely amazed. Right,
Speaker 1: And that's true that Leslie. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: he talked somewhat. A lot of it is ecchoeic and
Speaker 1: it's hard to carry on a conversation, but he well
Speaker 1: seeing any tune that he's heard. And as a musical salana,
Speaker 1: it's a little unusual to find someone who is a
Speaker 1: pianist but also singing, and Leslie does both. Right. So
Speaker 1: I want to ask a question, because you were the
Speaker 1: scientific advisor to the movie rain Man, I think there's
Speaker 1: a lot of misconceptions about the main character in that
Speaker 1: in that movie, to what extent was Raymond Babbitt based
Speaker 1: on a real character? Well, the film was inspired by
Speaker 1: Kim Peek, who is what I call him everest memory.
Speaker 1: He simply is as the most phenomenal memory of any Savannah. Ever,
Speaker 1: it turns out, quite by by accident, that very Morrow,
Speaker 1: who had written two made for television programs in the
Speaker 1: past about called Bill about when Mickey Rooney was playing
Speaker 1: someone who was comptly disabled. They just happened to be
Speaker 1: in the same room at the same time at this convention,
Speaker 1: and very Morrow was simply struck by Kim Peaks's memory.
Speaker 1: They they happened to be in a library room, and
Speaker 1: he was pulling books out and and and quizzing Kim
Speaker 1: about about them. And so he on the way back
Speaker 1: on the plane back to California, he wrote down autistic savant,
Speaker 1: and then he went about writing the script for for
Speaker 1: the movie rain Man, inspired by Kim Peak. But the
Speaker 1: Raymond Babbitt is a composite savant. Uh, it's not the
Speaker 1: story of Kim Peak. And all the scenes that you
Speaker 1: see in the movie are based on real life savants.
Speaker 1: The toothpick scene, the memorizing the phone book, the computing
Speaker 1: mathematical equations but not knowing the difference between the candy
Speaker 1: barn a sports car, all of those are our real
Speaker 1: life scenes. But Raymond Babbitt is a composite savant rather
Speaker 1: than the story of Kim Peak, right, right, So that's
Speaker 1: very interesting. So I want to I want to tase
Speaker 1: the tease a part A couple of things here, and
Speaker 1: that's the difference between autism and savantism. Am I correct
Speaker 1: and saying they're not the same thing and they're not
Speaker 1: always co occurring. Yes, that's right. Could you define each?
Speaker 1: Would you mind defining each? For sure? Savant syndrome is
Speaker 1: a is a remarkable but rare condition in which a
Speaker 1: person has some underlying developmental disability or other brain disorder
Speaker 1: who has some spectacular island of genius and stands in
Speaker 1: star contrast overall handicapped. So savant syndrome by definition means
Speaker 1: that somebody has an underlying disability and the savant ability
Speaker 1: is grafted onto that underlying disability. Now, about seventy percent
Speaker 1: of the time savants have autism as the underlying disability,
Speaker 1: but the other thirty percent have some other condition. Could
Speaker 1: be a traumatic brain injury, could be dementia, could be
Speaker 1: cognitive ability. So this so that not all savants are autistic,
Speaker 1: and not all autistic persons are savants. And I think
Speaker 1: one of the things that people come away from the
Speaker 1: movie saying, oh, I know what an autistic savant is,
Speaker 1: and they assume that all autistic savants or all autistic
Speaker 1: persons have the abilities of Raymond Babbitt, And that's not true.
Speaker 1: About one out of ten persons with autism does have
Speaker 1: some savannability, but means nine out of ten do not.
Speaker 1: So interesting, And I just wonder, like what what kind
Speaker 1: of traits or characteristics of autism can facilitate savant skills,
Speaker 1: because I mean, it's I don't think it's any coincidence
Speaker 1: that that most savant skills virtually all of them are
Speaker 1: non verbal in the nonverbal demean is that, right? Most? Mostly,
Speaker 1: there are some lots of ods who do have language abilities,
Speaker 1: where that where the ability to UH speak or or
Speaker 1: to interpret languages are is the ability. But that's that's
Speaker 1: really quite rare, right, So maybe some of these kind
Speaker 1: of characteristics of autism, like attention to detail, uh, interest
Speaker 1: in visual spatial reasoning, these sorts of things might be
Speaker 1: conducive to extraordinary skill, right. I think those that you
Speaker 1: mentioned attention to detail, the ability to to organize and
Speaker 1: and and and to memorize massive memory or extraordinary memory
Speaker 1: is shared as well. And the ability to UH to
Speaker 1: focus on detail rather than then the big picture is
Speaker 1: certainly a part of autism. And in terms of as
Speaker 1: I said, about one in ten persons with autism has savantabilities,
Speaker 1: but it's about one in fourteen hundred persons with other
Speaker 1: brain disorders underlying has savannabilities, So it's it's much more
Speaker 1: common in autism, and people are trying to find out why,
Speaker 1: what is that? What is the connection? Why is it
Speaker 1: one out of ten autistic persons and one out of
Speaker 1: fourteen hundred. Let me flip this. Let me flip the
Speaker 1: script for one second here. So there are a lot
Speaker 1: of things that non savants is what some people call
Speaker 1: neurotypical individuals are really good at, but we don't make
Speaker 1: a big deal out of it because it's just it's
Speaker 1: just a normally developing thing. So, for instance, like most
Speaker 1: people's social skills, probably a savant looks at their social
Speaker 1: skills and things think they're savants. Like savants probably look
Speaker 1: at don savants and say, wow, you're savanna and social skills. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: I mean it seems to me like, you know, if
Speaker 1: you spend so much time developing one area to the
Speaker 1: exclusion of other areas, you can become really good in
Speaker 1: that area, you know, and like savants show up and
Speaker 1: I don't think and we're going to get to this later.
Speaker 1: It's not all practice by any means. But you know,
Speaker 1: this is sort of attention to detail. They're sort of
Speaker 1: like you know, you see in the savant interests that
Speaker 1: they're not. They don't seem to be as interested in
Speaker 1: some things that that so that most quote neurotypical people
Speaker 1: are interested in. Would you say it's correct? Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's that's certainly true that there their interests are narrow
Speaker 1: often to uh several areas, and they do spend an
Speaker 1: awful lot of time uh in those areas. Uh at
Speaker 1: the expends frankly of of other things that that most
Speaker 1: of us spend our time with. So what do you
Speaker 1: think of the proposed d s M five changes or
Speaker 1: not the proposed the ones that are actually in the
Speaker 1: new DSM. In regards to autism, I know there's been
Speaker 1: some controversy surrounding that. Well, I think we I think
Speaker 1: there's some good news and bad news. I think that
Speaker 1: the good news is that there's some attempt to separate
Speaker 1: communication disorders out from autism, because there are some uh
Speaker 1: uh children with with hyperlexia particularly that are are often
Speaker 1: diagnosed mistakenly as autistic because of their preoccupational numbers and
Speaker 1: and and letters and so forth. So I think there
Speaker 1: there there has been a some lack of clarity between
Speaker 1: communication disorders and children with autism. So I think separating
Speaker 1: out some of the communicat disorders is a good thing. Uh.
Speaker 1: I think increasingly though the d s M tends to
Speaker 1: keep diluting m hm UH autism and expanding the definition. Uh.
Speaker 1: I still go back to Leo Kanner's original description of
Speaker 1: early infatile autism, which in which he described all of
Speaker 1: the characteristics of of that condition, and it was fairly
Speaker 1: narrow in terms of it's who would qualify, and we
Speaker 1: keep expanding that and to where I think autism is
Speaker 1: lost as specificity. So that's an interesting thing, an interesting point.
Speaker 1: You said specificity. So there even within the Savanta mean
Speaker 1: you go to great pains to differentiate between different kinds
Speaker 1: of savants to kind of get at that more granular level,
Speaker 1: granular level, right, So you could you maybe outline some
Speaker 1: of these different types of savants and why you think
Speaker 1: it's important to differentiate between them, why it matters. Well,
Speaker 1: I think in my experience at least divide savans into
Speaker 1: into three groups. And admittedly these are subjective at this point,
Speaker 1: and we need to come down with you know, I'd
Speaker 1: like to create some specific rationale and criteria, but at
Speaker 1: this point, the first level are splinter skills, and autistic
Speaker 1: children who are adults many times will have preoccupation with
Speaker 1: one one thing or another. May be calendar calculating, it
Speaker 1: may be remembering birthdays, license plates, other kinds of trivia,
Speaker 1: and they sort of people marvel at their ability to
Speaker 1: know everybody's birthday and remember everybody's birthday. When there's a
Speaker 1: fan or union, they go around and tell everybody remember
Speaker 1: whether birth is. Those are called splinter skills, and they
Speaker 1: do occur in persons with autism. The second level is
Speaker 1: something I call talented level, and this is where a
Speaker 1: skill becomes even more conspicuous, and generally a single skill
Speaker 1: like music or art, and it's conspicuous not just in
Speaker 1: relationship to the disability, but in the peer group in general.
Speaker 1: Is higher than you would find even in neurotypical youngsters.
Speaker 1: And then there's a third category called prodigious avants, and
Speaker 1: these are it's a high threshold level, and if these
Speaker 1: persons did not have a disability, we would call them
Speaker 1: a prodigy or genius. And I used to say there
Speaker 1: were twenty five such people in the world. I'm up
Speaker 1: to about one hundred down. Then there's probably probably many
Speaker 1: more than we don't know about. But what are some
Speaker 1: of the things these people can do? Can you give
Speaker 1: people conquered examples? Well, Kim Peek certainly with his memory
Speaker 1: he had memorized wal a thousand books and my memorize
Speaker 1: I'm talking about with page numbers, including I could do
Speaker 1: that for breakfast. Are you kidding me? That's nothing? Of
Speaker 1: course I know probably more than several thousand, probably, And
Speaker 1: so his his memory was uh was phenomenal. Uh. Leslie
Speaker 1: Lemke Uh is able to play back any song that
Speaker 1: he hears with a single hearing and has this repertoire
Speaker 1: which is endless. If he's heard the piece and you
Speaker 1: you remember how he coded it when he put it
Speaker 1: into his memory bank, Uh, he can pull that out.
Speaker 1: But but he also Uh, one of the concerts in Texas,
Speaker 1: instead of having him play the piece back that the
Speaker 1: person had played, we said, lest what we want you
Speaker 1: to this with the person, and so he waited about
Speaker 1: this person started a song he had never heard before,
Speaker 1: waited about three seconds, and then he began to play
Speaker 1: back what he had just heard, processed it and was
Speaker 1: outputting in his parallel processing and and I measured IQ
Speaker 1: of fifty eight. I think so. And Stephen Wiltshire can
Speaker 1: go by a helicopter over Manhattan for forty five minutes
Speaker 1: and then spend the next three days drawing what he
Speaker 1: saw window by window and building by building, And if
Speaker 1: you want to superimpose a digital photograph on what he
Speaker 1: saw on the helicopter, it's exactly the same. So there
Speaker 1: are and there are other artists who have that have
Speaker 1: ability to recreate with such fidelity that UH after a
Speaker 1: single UH viewing an Unlike many other artists, they don't
Speaker 1: keep going back to the to the photograph or to
Speaker 1: whatever they're drawing, and it's a single image and that's there,
Speaker 1: you know, permanently. What do you think is going on there?
Speaker 1: From like a biological neurological perspective, do you think you
Speaker 1: see minimal practice? Is that right? Minimal deliberate practice to
Speaker 1: get to that level? What do you think is going
Speaker 1: on there? I I know we have kind of different
Speaker 1: UH or complementary but somewhat different theories about the origins
Speaker 1: of those things. Maybe let's hear you, let's hear what
Speaker 1: what your thoughts are on that. Well, I think there's
Speaker 1: there's two things that seem to be going on with
Speaker 1: with savants and at any of these these three levels.
Speaker 1: The first is that there is some brain damage, often
Speaker 1: in the right hemisphere, but not always I'm sorry, in
Speaker 1: the left hemisphere. And and then there is a recruitment
Speaker 1: of some still intact cortical tissue on damaged tissue, there
Speaker 1: is a rewiring to that area, and then the release
Speaker 1: of dormant potential within that area. That's what I call
Speaker 1: the three rs. So there's there's brain damage in one
Speaker 1: area and then a recruitment of still intact often right
Speaker 1: hemisphere ability. But at the same time and probably by
Speaker 1: the same factor, there is a damage to the higher
Speaker 1: level memory circuits, so called cognitive or semantic memory, with
Speaker 1: a reliance on more procedural or lower level cortical triadle
Speaker 1: memory instead of cornical olympic memory. So what you see
Speaker 1: in the savon is often our right brain skills coupled
Speaker 1: with this procedural or habit memory, which is very very
Speaker 1: very narrow. Well, that's just that that does tells so
Speaker 1: nicely actually with with some of my work on impulsit learning,
Speaker 1: the work you know, we know that stratum is is
Speaker 1: related to the ability to non consciously soak up patterns. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: and I and my whole dissertation was on individual differences
Speaker 1: and implicit learning. Do people differ in this ability? I
Speaker 1: found they do and it's independent of IQ. So yeah,
Speaker 1: actually that's interesting. Yeah, now I think of it, there's
Speaker 1: a Yeah, I know, it's a really uh. In my
Speaker 1: book and Gifted, I write a lot about your theory
Speaker 1: and then talk about impusit learning as playing a possible
Speaker 1: uh role there, but it still begs the question like
Speaker 1: how much of that is you know? Or maybe some
Speaker 1: people are kind of like wired in a certain way
Speaker 1: that that allows for this important warning to happen more
Speaker 1: automatically than others. Yes, yeah, that's possible. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I think that's true. Uh. And I think that that
Speaker 1: there is that difference even in in neurotypical persons. I
Speaker 1: think some you know better those kind of skills than others.
Speaker 1: But I think in the in the salan that the
Speaker 1: memory is as impressive to me as as the skill itself.
Speaker 1: And those are connected, but I think they're two. There
Speaker 1: are two different processes in different areas of the brain
Speaker 1: that are affected. Yeah, and I think there's a lot
Speaker 1: of misconceptions about Savantism. One big one is that that
Speaker 1: these these they're very they're not people of creativity or improvisation,
Speaker 1: sort of outside a very narrow structure. And you've, you've,
Speaker 1: you've really argued against that myth right right. In my
Speaker 1: first book, Extraordinary People, I wrote that savants where we're
Speaker 1: not very creative. And I was wrong. And the reason
Speaker 1: that I was wrong was because I had just at
Speaker 1: that point, just an early single stamp shot of the savants.
Speaker 1: But now that I've been able to follow them for
Speaker 1: a number of years, what I've seen as a pattern
Speaker 1: in all of them that starts with with a phenomenal
Speaker 1: ability to recollect, to remember, whether it's remember a piece
Speaker 1: they've heard, or remember a scene from the Helicopter uh
Speaker 1: or memorized books. They have this tremendous recollection. But then
Speaker 1: if you follow them long enough, they seem to get
Speaker 1: bored with their records and begin to improvise. And that's
Speaker 1: certainly true of Leslie. He will if you play a
Speaker 1: piece for him and ask him to play it back,
Speaker 1: he will dutifully do that. But but after he's done
Speaker 1: doing that, he will start improvising and new variations on
Speaker 1: the theme of what he just learned and get a
Speaker 1: hold of control. And then the third stage is creativity
Speaker 1: producing something new. And I've seen this an artists who
Speaker 1: start with tremendous recollection, you know by fiber and animal
Speaker 1: for example, but then they begin to put a bush
Speaker 1: here that wasn't in the picture there, and soon they're
Speaker 1: doing some free freestyle. So there is this movement from
Speaker 1: recollection to improvisation to creativity, and some of it is
Speaker 1: really startling as the recollection itself. In other words, some
Speaker 1: of them some of the creativity. Leslie if you ask
Speaker 1: him to play a tune that he's never heard, it
Speaker 1: may not even exist. Some people trying to stump Leslie
Speaker 1: by by I'm saying to play something that doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: He will, he will create on the spot. He will
Speaker 1: create a song with the lyrics for that particular topic. Well,
Speaker 1: that is very impressive. Would you say any of these savants, though,
Speaker 1: are bona fide geniuses? Would you say any of them
Speaker 1: like really could go down the history books the genius
Speaker 1: And is that possible for savant to be like a
Speaker 1: like a like a historical genius. Yeah, yes, I think
Speaker 1: so okay cool, and there are some I think that
Speaker 1: maybe on the way to that. There is a a
Speaker 1: Savon and Australia who uh got his pH d in
Speaker 1: mathematics from U C. L A. And is doing some
Speaker 1: work which I think, you know, may may may push
Speaker 1: us farther along than we've ever been. Interestingly, his brother,
Speaker 1: who is not autistic on the fields, medal in mathematics.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh, but uh and uh. I think some
Speaker 1: of the uh, some of the Savants that are into
Speaker 1: interested now in quantum physics particularly or quantum theory are
Speaker 1: I think may take us farther than we've been. What
Speaker 1: makes them sravants though, as opposed to just people with
Speaker 1: high autism like traits. Where is their disability? What's their disability?
Speaker 1: It is autism and some of them it depends on
Speaker 1: I mean that uh. There they may have very limited
Speaker 1: daily living skills, They can't manage their own finances, They
Speaker 1: may need some caretakers. Sounds like this, sounds like me.
Speaker 1: I think. I think Kim Peek if he had Unfortunately
Speaker 1: Kim died about two or three years ago, but if
Speaker 1: he had continued, I think he would have. In fact,
Speaker 1: NASA was spending some time with him, and I think
Speaker 1: if there was such a thing as is such a
Speaker 1: thing as super intelligence, I think Kim was would be
Speaker 1: a candidate. On the other hand, he had to have
Speaker 1: helped dressing himself, He couldn't brush his own teeth because
Speaker 1: of some more skills, and had other problems with anxiety
Speaker 1: and so forth. So his autistic underpinnings were there, and
Speaker 1: that that's true of some of these others, is that right?
Speaker 1: That towards the and as he got older, Kim Peek
Speaker 1: started to be able to do some things that he
Speaker 1: wasn't able to do, Like there was a core progression
Speaker 1: and development of some of these quote neurotypical skills like
Speaker 1: social skills and stuff. Right, And I would put him
Speaker 1: on the same recollection and improvisation to creation spectrum because
Speaker 1: when I first met Kim he had memorized this factual
Speaker 1: memory which was simply astounding. But as time went on,
Speaker 1: rather than just bringing up a fact, he would he
Speaker 1: often would make a pun or some kind of a
Speaker 1: wit or some kind of on a connection sort of
Speaker 1: like a Google like connection. Originally, with Kim, if you
Speaker 1: said Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, he would give you the whole
Speaker 1: history of when it was written, first time it was played,
Speaker 1: and all that kind of thing. But toward the end
Speaker 1: of his life, I asked him one time, what do
Speaker 1: you know about Beethoven's Fifth Symphony? And he said Churchill
Speaker 1: And I said, I don't, Kim, I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: get it. He said, well, Morris code is for dot.
Speaker 1: Dot is the letter V. And Churchill always had this
Speaker 1: letter V. Whenever you saw him, he was flashing the
Speaker 1: letter B and so he was making the connection between
Speaker 1: And one time I asked him, what do you know
Speaker 1: about Lincoln's Gettysburg address and he said fourteen ten Front Street.
Speaker 1: I said, I don't get it. He said, well, that's
Speaker 1: where Lincoln stayed the night before he gave his famous speech.
Speaker 1: So that was his Lincoln's Gettysburg address. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: it seems like he was like a walking hippocampus. I mean,
Speaker 1: it just seems like he, you know, his associative memory.
Speaker 1: We all have ability for socis of memory, but we
Speaker 1: don't peer into that. We also, like have all these
Speaker 1: other brain networks getting in the way and inhibiting it.
Speaker 1: And it's almost like he was just having direct access
Speaker 1: to his hippocampus whenever he wanted free, rain free, raid
Speaker 1: free rate. Well, that's true, and many times his dad
Speaker 1: was able to be kind of an interpreter because Kim
Speaker 1: was so far ahead many times with these puns or
Speaker 1: associations that I didn't understand, or even his dad didn't understand,
Speaker 1: but he was and they were instant. I mean, he
Speaker 1: would do this on speaking engagements or other kinds of things.
Speaker 1: He would make these these puns or these witticisms that
Speaker 1: were simply jaw dropping. And that's and that's when you
Speaker 1: spend time with him, that's what you got in terms
Speaker 1: of trying to converse with him and trying to keep
Speaker 1: up with him. Oh wow, it's so interesting what you
Speaker 1: know to look at, like how much the brain can
Speaker 1: impact this stuff. You know a lot of people say, well,
Speaker 1: culture and learning and environments really important too. But in
Speaker 1: some of these specific cases, it's hard for me to
Speaker 1: wrap my head around how Kim peak would have been different?
Speaker 1: What what ways do you think his memory abilities would
Speaker 1: have been different under different conditions. Maybe if he wasn't
Speaker 1: nurtured as much, he wouldn't have been as good, But
Speaker 1: I don't know, Like what do you what do you
Speaker 1: think is the role of the environment. It's not like
Speaker 1: a teacher taught him how to memorize. He doesn't do
Speaker 1: all his memory tricks, you know. Well, naturally, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a preoccupy, the preoccupation, uh, and it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of a force as much as a gift. H. He
Speaker 1: has to I mean, he has to read leslie Lempkley,
Speaker 1: has to play the piano. If he doesn't, he gets anxious.
Speaker 1: And and and and John Sarking acquired savon. He has
Speaker 1: to paint and so Uh. It's this drive that uh
Speaker 1: is continually mining or digging with the area. And and
Speaker 1: for some it it gets to be uh, sort of insatiable.
Speaker 1: I remember a calendar calculator, George Finn uh who was
Speaker 1: able with his twin brother, and there they were calendar
Speaker 1: calculators as well as other number specialists. And I one
Speaker 1: time uh uh he lived in New York and we
Speaker 1: had a cable TV show somewhere in New Jersey, and
Speaker 1: so we had to travel by car from New York
Speaker 1: to wherever this was, and the conversation was just continually
Speaker 1: about numbers and dates, and you know, it was almost
Speaker 1: exhausting that by the time we were there because everything
Speaker 1: just revolved around these uh uh these numbers and so forth.
Speaker 1: So I think it is sort of insatiable need to uh,
Speaker 1: to rehearse or to demonstrate the ability. Several of the
Speaker 1: acquired sponts, like Tommy mchughe in England or or John
Speaker 1: Sarkin in this country became artists after their uh traumatic
Speaker 1: brain injury. But they can't stop. I mean they're drawing
Speaker 1: on the floor, they're drawing on the ceiling, they're drawing
Speaker 1: on you know, they just have to keep drawing. And
Speaker 1: it's it's this insatiable kind of force, and it's it's
Speaker 1: not so much a practice effect as it is needing
Speaker 1: to to discharge this uh, the need to draw or
Speaker 1: to paint or to compute. Right, So you've proposedally called
Speaker 1: like genetic memory, and how do you reconcize the genetic
Speaker 1: memory deal with this idea of the acquired savant. Well,
Speaker 1: the acquired savant I think demonstrates genetic memory in that
Speaker 1: these are ordinary folk who have a brain injury or
Speaker 1: a stroke or some central nervous system incident and become
Speaker 1: expert in art or music or math, where there was
Speaker 1: no such ability before. Tommy McHugh, for example, was a
Speaker 1: construction worker basically in London. We had a rather colorful
Speaker 1: life and in terms of you know, and out of
Speaker 1: prisons and that sort of thing. And uh had a
Speaker 1: stroke from which he recovered. But what he had the
Speaker 1: became a poet. I mean, if there was a likely
Speaker 1: person to be a poet, it was Tommy make you
Speaker 1: and an artist. And he simply was drawing everywhere anywhere,
Speaker 1: and so uh that ability had to be inside him
Speaker 1: prior to the stroke. He didn't learn that, he didn't
Speaker 1: learn how to draw or to become a poet. It
Speaker 1: just appeared, uh after in his recovery. So it had
Speaker 1: to exist. And I think that those pockets of ability
Speaker 1: exists in all of us in an a dormant capacity.
Speaker 1: Uh and the the acquired savant taps into that. And
Speaker 1: the question is where did where did Tommy mccuse our
Speaker 1: ability and interest and come from? And I guess from
Speaker 1: my standpoint the only way it could be there is
Speaker 1: through genetic memory. And then there are these pockets of
Speaker 1: dormant capacity within all of us that are transmitted genetically.
Speaker 1: And so what I'm saying is that we inherit not
Speaker 1: just the color of our eyes or how tall we're
Speaker 1: going to be, or even behavior traits. I think we
Speaker 1: actually inherit knowledge, and by then I'm talking about the
Speaker 1: rules of music, art or math, for example, I'll come
Speaker 1: Another possibility is that we inherit the ability to learn
Speaker 1: the rules. We don't actually inherit the rules themselves. We
Speaker 1: kind of like where some people are more prepared to
Speaker 1: it's like a template or a skeleton, and they just
Speaker 1: their experience fills it in. You know, yeah, well, I
Speaker 1: think that's I think that's possible. I'm open to that.
Speaker 1: The thing that that serves me away from that is
Speaker 1: the rapidity and the the the epiphany like quality that
Speaker 1: these have that that appear and they appear to me
Speaker 1: intact as opposed to to rapid learning. Uh. It's hard
Speaker 1: to prove that or disprove that, but but I think
Speaker 1: I know that there are many people who feel that
Speaker 1: the what is inherited is is the scaffolding or the
Speaker 1: ability to learn quickly. But I've got some cases where
Speaker 1: this just appeared with such uh spontaneity and such intactness
Speaker 1: that it's hard to believe that the person learned that.
Speaker 1: And in some cases, for example, in Man, they they're
Speaker 1: able to uh compute prime numbers or do other kinds
Speaker 1: of formulas and so forth, without ever having been exposed
Speaker 1: to them. No. In fact, I've got some autistic savants
Speaker 1: who are able to now that that we have the
Speaker 1: type typing tablet and they can. They have been mute,
Speaker 1: but they're they're now typing on their own on this tablet.
Speaker 1: Who who are u uh uh typing out the periodic table,
Speaker 1: for example, never having seen the periodic table. That is
Speaker 1: very that is very impressive. Do you think the same
Speaker 1: thing is kind of going on with people with talents
Speaker 1: just neurotypical people with talents or I guess they wouldn't
Speaker 1: be nor typical if they have an extraordinary talent, But
Speaker 1: I don't know, like people with prodigies prodigies. Do you
Speaker 1: think a lot of these things are kind of similar phenomenon? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the I've been I get a lot of
Speaker 1: emails that say I've got a son or daughter who
Speaker 1: and then the parent tells me there the story about
Speaker 1: the the special skill. Generally that they've because they've heard
Speaker 1: about savants, and many times it's it's difficult to sort
Speaker 1: out uh savant abilities from prodigy from giftedness and some
Speaker 1: of these. I think some of these children are are
Speaker 1: profoundly gifted. I guess I suppose you could call them
Speaker 1: a prodigy. I know, but uh, well, the strategy officially
Speaker 1: yet to be before the age of ten. Okay, all right,
Speaker 1: But I think sometimes these profoundly gifted children or prodigies
Speaker 1: are difficult to sort out from autisms. Not if the
Speaker 1: autism symptoms are are severe, the child is mute and
Speaker 1: withdrawn and obviously autistic, then you know that it's clear
Speaker 1: that that would be a savant skill. But I think
Speaker 1: that Daniel Tannet when we did a program together, and
Speaker 1: he said that, you know, the line between genius and
Speaker 1: savant is a very thin one, the very narrow one.
Speaker 1: And I think he's right in terms of the trying
Speaker 1: to trying to differentiate those in terms of their their
Speaker 1: ability and skill on the face of it. But it's
Speaker 1: an important distinction because if if what let's say, hyperlexia
Speaker 1: a childhood reads very early, we're talking about kids in
Speaker 1: twenty or twenty two months reading. Now some of those
Speaker 1: sometimes the hyperlexia is a splenter skill, and as the
Speaker 1: picture emerges, it turns out that that child is autistic.
Speaker 1: But what has the hyperlexia is sort of his savon skill.
Speaker 1: But there's but there are a group of children out
Speaker 1: there who are hyperlexic with autistic like symptoms for a
Speaker 1: period of time where the outcome is entirely so I'm
Speaker 1: trying to to sort those out is a real challenge. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's also very important, you know, I'm for gifting
Speaker 1: talented education and identification of kids who are falling between
Speaker 1: the cracks. Yeah, I think it's really important. Well, it is.
Speaker 1: And I got an email just yesterday from a family
Speaker 1: where the child is hyperlexic and thought to be autistic,
Speaker 1: and the school was insisting that this child go to
Speaker 1: special education, which is exactly the wrong place for this
Speaker 1: particular child. Unfortunately, the parents resisted that and put them
Speaker 1: into a different educational system, and now I think the
Speaker 1: outcome is going to be that's a whole Another area
Speaker 1: of my work is what I call hyperlexia three, which is, uh,
Speaker 1: there are three kinds of hyperlexia. One is normal kids, neurotypical,
Speaker 1: ordinary kids who read very early. And then there's a
Speaker 1: second group where the hyperlexia is a part of their
Speaker 1: autistic splinter skill. But there's a third group called hyperlexia
Speaker 1: three where kids have autistic like symptoms for a period
Speaker 1: of time, which they outgrow and go on to be
Speaker 1: very bright, contributing normal individuals, and the educational decisions that
Speaker 1: are made are crucial, UH in that group of youngsters.
Speaker 1: So what does this kid's outcome in the new school
Speaker 1: doing marvelously great? Great in terms of growth socially particularly
Speaker 1: and just UH had been and a lot of trouble
Speaker 1: with UH was reading very early and that was very
Speaker 1: striking in the hyperlexia, but language was slowed. And now
Speaker 1: in this first months in this new school, language has
Speaker 1: sort of erupted marvelously, as as have the social skills
Speaker 1: in the school. Is but the other school was actually
Speaker 1: wanting this child to who was bored with math, you know,
Speaker 1: because I had a way ahead of the curve. But
Speaker 1: they were saying, you have to go through these the
Speaker 1: usual math sequence because that's what that's the way it
Speaker 1: is in the school. So it's crucial to sort those
Speaker 1: those out. I absolutely absolutely agree, and I'm really glad
Speaker 1: that you're making these points I wanted to talk about,
Speaker 1: and I'm very mindful of your time, you know, but
Speaker 1: this is so the so so fun talk to you.
Speaker 1: Do you do you mind having another fifteen minutes or so? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: You know, we talked about the acquired savant. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about the sudden savant for instance. For example, for a second,
Speaker 1: this individual, Jason Paget, has again a lot of he
Speaker 1: wrote a book recently, and so I've seen a lot
Speaker 1: of interviews. I've listened to a lot of interviews radio
Speaker 1: on radio interviews with him and stuff. This guy got,
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's his head. You know, he
Speaker 1: got he got beat up, robbed, you know, his wallet
Speaker 1: stone or something out of after leaving a bar, and
Speaker 1: he the next day started seeing he said, he started
Speaker 1: seeing like numbers and things. Do you think any of
Speaker 1: these people are just making it up? Yeah, well he's not,
Speaker 1: because I I just spent I had him here for
Speaker 1: a lecture two weeks ago, okay, a chance to spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time with him, and he was simply
Speaker 1: had no interest in math and managed to sort of
Speaker 1: graduate from high school by substituting somebody else's work. And
Speaker 1: you know, I mean he simply was not an acadimis
Speaker 1: she just didn't care about that. And then he ends
Speaker 1: up getting mugged and has this concussion and begins to
Speaker 1: see these strange images which he had never seen before.
Speaker 1: And somebody said, as he tried to describe them to people,
Speaker 1: they said, well, I don't know what you're told him
Speaker 1: as you draw on them. And so he had never
Speaker 1: done any drawing before either, and so he drew these out.
Speaker 1: And they're very complicated and very precise. It may take
Speaker 1: two weeks sometimes to complete one of these images. And
Speaker 1: he was sitting somewhere having coffee or something, and a
Speaker 1: professor or physics professor came by and he said, my gosh,
Speaker 1: you know what those ares, don't you? He said, no,
Speaker 1: I those are fractals, and he said, you know what's
Speaker 1: a fractal? And so then and so he learned what
Speaker 1: a fractal is and has become He did go back
Speaker 1: to college then and is taking math courses and has
Speaker 1: become very expert. And he may be one of these
Speaker 1: people that lead us a little further than we've been
Speaker 1: in terms of when you hear him talk about relativity
Speaker 1: and explaining it and so forth and swan so he
Speaker 1: his for real. I think there are some others where
Speaker 1: there are are questions raised as to whether a musician,
Speaker 1: for example, really didn't have any musical training in the past.
Speaker 1: I have I think now somewhere in the range of
Speaker 1: seventy acquired savants that have have that I've learned about,
Speaker 1: and and they seem genuine and uh real, you know,
Speaker 1: their story seemed very genuine and real. There was this
Speaker 1: girl recently who had U was a ordinary person without
Speaker 1: any particular drawing skills or artistic skills, and she had
Speaker 1: a head injury rather mild actually, but then began to
Speaker 1: do these tonsile sketches and she sent them to me,
Speaker 1: and they're simply striking. There's simply stunning in the She's
Speaker 1: never done any of that kind of thing before. So
Speaker 1: now that uh what I'm what I'm trying to in
Speaker 1: terms of the acquired savant. Some of these acquire a
Speaker 1: new skill but pay a price for it in terms
Speaker 1: of cognitive ability or memory or other kinds of a
Speaker 1: trade off of some sort. But I'm seeing more acquired
Speaker 1: savants now where there doesn't seem to be a trade off.
Speaker 1: And I would I would I would put a Jason
Speaker 1: into into that category. And and then I get other
Speaker 1: emails from people who have not necessarily had an injury
Speaker 1: but have an epiphany of talent that just arrives on
Speaker 1: the scene and they suddenly become expert in something we're
Speaker 1: not expert. That's the sudden savan. These are people who
Speaker 1: where there has been no no central nervous system incident
Speaker 1: and and suddenly they are artists or poets or whatever.
Speaker 1: And uh that that's even more more unusual. But I'm
Speaker 1: seeing some of those cases now. And uh I got
Speaker 1: an email a couple of days ago from a young
Speaker 1: woman who had never I mean, she was an average
Speaker 1: student and she was I think in junior high school
Speaker 1: and just woke up at one point one day and
Speaker 1: suddenly had this this sudden urge and preoccupation with math
Speaker 1: that she had no interest in before. And now she's,
Speaker 1: you know, excelling and in that in that area. Why
Speaker 1: you know why that happened on that particular day or what,
Speaker 1: I don't know, But that's those are the sudden slats,
Speaker 1: is there? So if there is, as you've said, a
Speaker 1: little rain man in all of us, then you know,
Speaker 1: what can we what can like you know, the average
Speaker 1: Joe Joe do without you know, hitting their head against
Speaker 1: you know, a concrete wall, or you know, to change
Speaker 1: their brain or you know, I mean, I know there's
Speaker 1: new like there's researchers doing like t you know, to
Speaker 1: doing like transcranial stimulate you're trying to do that and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. What else can people do? Well, I
Speaker 1: think there's all sorts of effort to make ourselves smarter.
Speaker 1: And coffee exactly that, as a matter of fact, is uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the pharmacologic route and the people have been
Speaker 1: experimenting for and coffee is a good example. It does
Speaker 1: work in the short run, and there are other uh
Speaker 1: uh chemicals out there now which will improve memory in
Speaker 1: the short run at least make you feel like you're smarter.
Speaker 1: Whether or not you're actually smarter is a different story. Yeah, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: well it'll certainly it will impact demonstrably on memory capacity.
Speaker 1: For example, the amphetamines will you know, make you make
Speaker 1: your memory, improve your memory, and you can demonstrate that
Speaker 1: on tests, but it's it's not a lasting effect. So
Speaker 1: there's a pharmacologic and of course anything if you watch
Speaker 1: any television now, no matter what what it is, there's
Speaker 1: all of the metabolic products out there, the jellyfish that
Speaker 1: makes our that makes our brains better and work better.
Speaker 1: So there's this perpetual search for something pharmacologic. There's the
Speaker 1: technologic you mentioned the h R T M S. There is,
Speaker 1: in fact, doctor Allen Snyder in Australia has been working
Speaker 1: with with that in a very systematic kind of way.
Speaker 1: But there is if you, if you google it down,
Speaker 1: you can buy these headsets that are available to commercially
Speaker 1: to put on your head and stimulate your cortex and
Speaker 1: supposedly help. So there's that technological route, there's the pharmacological route. Uh.
Speaker 1: There is the uh meditation and mindfulness route that sort
Speaker 1: of taking a deliberate cognitive approach to expanding your mind,
Speaker 1: your memory. I think the less dramatic route is simply
Speaker 1: to make some effort to sort of what I call
Speaker 1: rummage in our right hemisphere a bit and find a
Speaker 1: skill or capacity or interest that that that one can
Speaker 1: can pursue, not necessarily just as a hobby or any retirement,
Speaker 1: but to find out a lot of people do find
Speaker 1: that out after they retire. They have an ability or
Speaker 1: they have something they've always wanted to pursue, and now
Speaker 1: I have the time to do so. And I'm saying
Speaker 1: we should get started earlier on that, uh too. And
Speaker 1: that's a different it's not a very dramatic kind of
Speaker 1: mind expansion. But I think it's the kind that works.
Speaker 1: Can you become really good at something without any talent
Speaker 1: to begin with? Like can't? Doesn't practice like matter as well? Well?
Speaker 1: I think practice matters, and it matters even in the Sabans.
Speaker 1: That the thing that with the Samans, the musical Samans
Speaker 1: for example, as they they they train the talent and
Speaker 1: they get better by doing that. And so the fact
Speaker 1: that they can, that you can train it or develop
Speaker 1: it doesn't necessarily obviate the fact that in the saman
Speaker 1: is just there and sometimes they're in a way that
Speaker 1: they haven't been exposed to, and that so there's no
Speaker 1: question that practice effect can improve the skill. But that
Speaker 1: doesn't negate the fact that savants know things they never learned,
Speaker 1: and that's another you know, that's that's another whole area
Speaker 1: of course, as you know, some you know people argue
Speaker 1: for the ten thousand hours practice effect. You know, give
Speaker 1: me a child and give me a bright child, or
Speaker 1: just give me a child who is and the only
Speaker 1: thing he or she has to do is to learn
Speaker 1: music and concentrate only on that, and I will know
Speaker 1: at the end of it, have a prodigy. Your genius,
Speaker 1: and I say no, I think there is a substrate
Speaker 1: of talent that's distributed in the bell shaped curve that
Speaker 1: we're not all going to be a little angeloser or
Speaker 1: Einstein's but at the extremes there is this talent, and
Speaker 1: I'm adding to talent knowledge of the rules of that
Speaker 1: particular talent that I think are inherited. So such an
Speaker 1: interesting conversation for me, and I really appreciate it. I
Speaker 1: want to end a little bit talking about your theory
Speaker 1: of mellow How can we all be more mellow? And
Speaker 1: what are some you know, other side interests or hobbies
Speaker 1: or things they most excite you today? Right? Well, of
Speaker 1: course mellowing comes from listening to patients through the years.
Speaker 1: And obviously if you listen to well, like any doctor
Speaker 1: in any specialty, towards the end of your career, you
Speaker 1: get more and more interested in prevention rather than treatment.
Speaker 1: You know, all along one wonders about how can you
Speaker 1: keep this from happening? But I think and the longer
Speaker 1: one it's in a career, the more intrigued one gets
Speaker 1: with how can we keep this from happy? So I
Speaker 1: listened to patients for all these years and learned certain
Speaker 1: things from them, from listening to them, and I just
Speaker 1: put those together in a formula or a booklet or
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it, called mellowing and for example,
Speaker 1: being able to well. First of all, my definition of
Speaker 1: mental health is being relaxed at ease and pleasantly convivial.
Speaker 1: And that's what mello means, relaxed at ease and pleasantly convivial.
Speaker 1: And how does one become that? Well, there are things
Speaker 1: you can do, for example, to focus more on on
Speaker 1: who I am rather than what I do, and not
Speaker 1: all of my identity, you know, wrapped up in what
Speaker 1: I do, rather than the who I am, sorting out
Speaker 1: what I called the urgent from the important. That we
Speaker 1: spend so much of our times with urgent things in
Speaker 1: our life, and we ignore the important things like love
Speaker 1: and care and concern and interaction with each other. We priorities,
Speaker 1: we get our priorities uh mixed up in and a
Speaker 1: variety of other kinds of things that are really common sense,
Speaker 1: but but we we don't know. We don't pay much
Speaker 1: attention to our health until it's interrupted. Then suddenly it's
Speaker 1: like we don't pay much attention to sleep until we
Speaker 1: can't sleep well. And once your health is interrupted, then
Speaker 1: I especially with mental health, there are things one can
Speaker 1: can look at. So I've put those together in a
Speaker 1: little formula. I guess that make us more able to
Speaker 1: be relaxed, at ease and pleasantly con vivial. And part
Speaker 1: of it is just getting off the treadmill that that
Speaker 1: that we that we that we end up on, some
Speaker 1: of which is necessary and and but but a lot
Speaker 1: of it we encurrent things that that we learn later
Speaker 1: on We're not all that important. This is really great diald.
Speaker 1: And you know, I feel like you've I've got a
Speaker 1: lot of wisdom from you in lots of different ways.
Speaker 1: I mean, looking back, you know, your whole your very
Speaker 1: long career. You know what is like, what is like
Speaker 1: a major like? What was given you the greatest sense
Speaker 1: of like meaning in your life has been interacting with
Speaker 1: these savants, getting to really know them as people as
Speaker 1: opposed to just doing scientific research. You know what, what
Speaker 1: are really some of the most meaningful highlights of your career.
Speaker 1: I think the highlight has been not so much what
Speaker 1: I might have discovered or insights that I've had, but
Speaker 1: it's the effect that some of those insights or interactions
Speaker 1: have had on people and their lives, not only the Savans,
Speaker 1: but their families as well. And the real compensation that
Speaker 1: I get at this point in my career is from
Speaker 1: the letters from parents or from I got a long
Speaker 1: email the other day from a girl who is now
Speaker 1: twenty one years old, and she was hyperlexic, given a
Speaker 1: diagnosis mistakenly of autism, and treated in some ways that
Speaker 1: really was not anyway. She wrote, I need this letter
Speaker 1: of what it's like to have gone through that, in
Speaker 1: the hopes that I could share that with other youngsters
Speaker 1: or parents. The thing that the knowledge that I've been
Speaker 1: helpful to people. It's one thing to do your job
Speaker 1: well and take satisfaction in doing a good job, but
Speaker 1: the real satisfaction comes from knowing that that effort is appreciated,
Speaker 1: and so you get I think at the end of
Speaker 1: a I know doctor Walder Kempster, who was the superintendent
Speaker 1: of Winnebago a century before I was. When he retired,
Speaker 1: his staff gave him a bunch of books, the library,
Speaker 1: books which in those days were very valuable, and he said,
Speaker 1: I really, I really, I'm glad to get these books
Speaker 1: and I will treasure them. But he said that more
Speaker 1: important than knowing that I did the job well. Is
Speaker 1: that the knowledge that my efforts were appreciated. And I
Speaker 1: think that's true of all of us. And so my
Speaker 1: satisfaction comes from and it's in small ways. I every
Speaker 1: now and then go on and meet with a high
Speaker 1: school class of the advanced psychology students or whatever. I
Speaker 1: go to a little village here here called Oakfield once
Speaker 1: a year and we get together and I do this lecture.
Speaker 1: And each year they send me back a card signed
Speaker 1: by all of these kids. You know how appreciative they were.
Speaker 1: And for some they will say it's been a meaningful
Speaker 1: you know, I'm thinking about I want to be a psychiatrist,
Speaker 1: or I want to be a psychologist, or I want
Speaker 1: to be a neuroscientist. And I have a couple of
Speaker 1: kids out there now who are about to graduate from
Speaker 1: medical school. When they wrote to me and said, the
Speaker 1: reason I'm in medical school is because of this lecture
Speaker 1: that you give it that I said I wanted to attendant.
Speaker 1: So it's that kind of feedback that you know, it's
Speaker 1: not monetary, but it is the appreciation and knowing that
Speaker 1: you've had a really positive impact on these and the
Speaker 1: appreciation letters from these parents especially, are are just really
Speaker 1: really moving. You know. I know for a fact, a
Speaker 1: lot of people really appreciate you. I really appreciate you.
Speaker 1: And I've seen videos. I've seen you interact with these savants,
Speaker 1: many of these individuals who there's hardly anyone else in
Speaker 1: their life who really appreciate them, their uniqueness, and you
Speaker 1: kind of bring out of them. I've seen you bring
Speaker 1: out of them is kind of special, you know, the
Speaker 1: expression of themselves that a lot of people haven't been
Speaker 1: able to coax out of them. So I think you've
Speaker 1: really done a great, great service. Well, thank you. I
Speaker 1: think you know. I when I started the children's unit
Speaker 1: at Winnebago, we had these very disturbed kids, and and
Speaker 1: we started this unit, and we started a school, and
Speaker 1: there weren't any models out there, so we had to
Speaker 1: we had to create our own. And my motto, or
Speaker 1: I guess my strategy, was that no matter how disturbed
Speaker 1: this child is and how how closed they are, somewhere
Speaker 1: in there is an island of intactnus uh. And that's
Speaker 1: true of every psychotic patient or every depressed patient too.
Speaker 1: No matter how depressed, you know, there is this island
Speaker 1: of intactness and our job is to find that island
Speaker 1: of intagnis and to build on it, you know, to
Speaker 1: to nurture it and to make it grow. And so
Speaker 1: it is with the savants that that within them. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's easy. With some of them, there's this island of
Speaker 1: genius that you know that it strikes. But even with
Speaker 1: some of the other kids that are really considerately or
Speaker 1: some of the psychotic patients that I've treated, I search
Speaker 1: for that island of antagonists, or even with some of
Speaker 1: the behavioral kids, the kids that are acting out, and
Speaker 1: so you're still so I guess I have that if
Speaker 1: there's a sort of an urge within me, and it's
Speaker 1: to search for that island of antagnus. And no matter
Speaker 1: how how disturbed the person is, I love that and
Speaker 1: that and sometimes you know, you learn, you learn from
Speaker 1: your patients. And that's what this melowing book that is
Speaker 1: all about the things that I've learned from some of
Speaker 1: some of the things are are very obvious. I I
Speaker 1: when I first became superintendent the hospital, I put on
Speaker 1: a suggestion box and I said to the patients, you
Speaker 1: know I go home every night, you stay here. What
Speaker 1: can we do to make this a better place? And
Speaker 1: one guy put a suggestion, he said, don't serve beans
Speaker 1: on dance night. And it's very practical and easy to implement.
Speaker 1: Easy to implement. So if you listen, you hear things
Speaker 1: that you learn, you are the savant whisperer. Last question,
Speaker 1: you know, what are you most excited about in the future.
Speaker 1: You know, it could be recent advances and technology. Can
Speaker 1: you be you personally in your own personal life. I
Speaker 1: think the neuroscience frontier is I think we're you know,
Speaker 1: we we have barely scratched the surface of the brain
Speaker 1: and it's and it's complexity. The more I've worked with it,
Speaker 1: the more in awe I am of this three and
Speaker 1: a half pounds of circuitry and what it can do,
Speaker 1: and and how little we're we really have been able to,
Speaker 1: uh to unravel about that. But I think we're now
Speaker 1: have some technology and techniques, not all imaging, but some
Speaker 1: other kinds of things as well that that will allow
Speaker 1: us to you know, my hope is that that's some
Speaker 1: of the things that I've been talking about, including the
Speaker 1: genetic memory kind of thing, we'll be able to somebody
Speaker 1: will be able to pick up and to prove. So
Speaker 1: that's what I'm uh looking looking forward to and seeing
Speaker 1: some of these. I gave a recently, gave a lecture
Speaker 1: to a bunch of fourth graders and in an elementary school.
Speaker 1: They asked me to come, and I thought, she's I
Speaker 1: know how to talk to adults, and I, you know,
Speaker 1: graduate students will say the fourth graders. And so I
Speaker 1: went there and we had we just had a blast.
Speaker 1: Those kids were prepared for obviously the teacher had prepared them.
Speaker 1: And said, doctor Treford, how come there are more male
Speaker 1: savants than female sevants. I mean these are fourth graders,
Speaker 1: you know, raising that kind of a question. And at
Speaker 1: the end of it, a little guy and a little
Speaker 1: girl came up and the guy said to me, he said,
Speaker 1: I want to be a neuroscientist when I grow up,
Speaker 1: and the little girl said me to And for me,
Speaker 1: the real payoff would be the day they walk across
Speaker 1: the stage and get their master's degree and neuroscience and
Speaker 1: their doctorate and carry on the work that I've sort
Speaker 1: of started or have been immersed in. And I you
Speaker 1: know that to me is that's where I drawing my satisfy.
Speaker 1: I had. Also, I've got a huge orchard which I
Speaker 1: take care of which I it's in full bloom right
Speaker 1: at the moment, and it's just marvelous. And so I
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time on our property. We've got
Speaker 1: a beautiful waterfall on our property too, and so I
Speaker 1: can you know, soap that up just as much as
Speaker 1: genetic memory. Please take a picture of them in bloom
Speaker 1: and I can put in the show notes. Okay, picture
Speaker 1: you take. I will, thank you, Dad. I just have
Speaker 1: really treasure this conversation and getting all the conversations we've had. Well.
Speaker 1: I appreciate the chance to talk with you and get
Speaker 1: to know you a bit better and electronically, at least
Speaker 1: at some point, I hope our paths will cross and
Speaker 1: I'll keep doing what I'm doing and you keep doing
Speaker 1: what you're doing, and between the two of us will
Speaker 1: move things ahead a little bit more. Sounds great, Tyrol,
Speaker 1: thank you? Okay, Okay, thanks thanks for listening to The
Speaker 1: Psychology Podcast with Doctor Scott Barry Kaufman. I hope you
Speaker 1: found this episode just as an informative and thought provoking
Speaker 1: as I did. If you'd like to read the show
Speaker 1: notes for this episode or here past episodes, you can
Speaker 1: go to the Psychology Podcast dot com.