Savant Syndrome
If you have ever experienced a traumatic brain injury (TBI) such as a concussion before, you might recall that a doctor didn’t ask you during concussion protocols, “Can you play the piano? speak a new language? do math? do you know Kung-Fu? do you feel smarter?!”. In fact, if doctors had asked me about post-trauma abilities immediately following my own TBI, I’m positive that I would have suggested that they go through concussion protocols of their own. As crazy as it may seem though, these things happen in rare situations and abilities can manifest where detriment is expected; which was the case for myself and others throughout the world. Since being diagnosed with Acquired Savant Syndrome (ASS…I know) though, I often wonder just how rare it truly is.
While I can only speak on the behalf of my own experience and research pertaining to ASS, I think an argument can be made with regard to it being more prevalent than we presently believe it to be. Further, it is my opinion that the prevalence of this diagnosis will increase in parallel with our understanding of it. In opening up about my own experience, it is my hope that it may compel others to consider the possibility of ASS being more prevalent while also reconsidering their own perceived disabilities and limitations alike.
Background
Depending on who you ask or where you look, there are anywhere from 30–100 people to have ever been diagnosed with ASS in the world. Even though there are a few hypotheses as to how ASS can occur, there is not a complete scientific explanation regarding the mechanisms behind Savant Syndrome as of yet. Despite our lack of a full understanding of this condition though, ASS isn’t a complete unknown. Although, most people, including doctors, do not seem to share a common understanding of even the most minimal interpretation:
“In most persons with savant syndrome, the exceptional savant skill surfaces during childhood, quite unexpectedly and often explosively. Those savant abilities are superimposed on some underlying developmental or other disability that was present at birth. This is called congenital savant syndrome. But in recent years there have been a number of cases reported in which, after some brain injury or brain disease, savant skills unexpectedly emerge, sometimes at a prodigious level, when no such skills were present before injury or illness. This is called acquired savant syndrome. In many of these cases, the special abilities emerge following left hemisphere injury, particularly left anterior temporal lobe injury. Increasingly, there is speculation that these newly emerged skills, formerly dormant, are “released,” compensatory abilities rather than newly created ones.” -Dr. Darold Treffert
In short, what can be said for now is that in rare situations and when someone experiences a TBI that is typically around the region of their left temple, certain abilities can manifest post-trauma that did not exist prior. In these situations, some may be able to play a new musical instrument, speak a new language or develop new calculative abilities, and others may simply become more intelligent post-trauma; among other things.
At least in my particular situation, ASS seems to be eerily similar to a blind person improving their auditory capabilities or a deaf person developing an enhanced visual capacity. Instead of my brain compensating with my physical senses though, where I lost some cognitive abilities my brain seemingly compensated with an improved intellect in other areas. Because of this, I like to think of this condition as a proving ground for neuroplasticity.
Before My Accident
Before diving into any of the advantages resulting from this condition though, I think it’s important to point out that this condition isn’t a comparison between me or anyone else and is merely a comparison between my current self and former self. When describing ASS or identifying as a savant, it is common for people to confuse brevity for hubris or narcissism and some have gone on to accuse me of claiming to be a genius or the smartest person in the room; which just isn’t the case. Even though there is nothing humble about ASS, except for the acronym itself, it has been the single most humbling experience of my life.
Up until my TBI, I would only go to the gym when I had a friend to coerce me to go and stay there long enough to be of any benefit. I had read maybe three books in my entire life and was obsessed with cars and guns instead. On top of this, I thought that I knew everything and fortified this by watching hours of Fox News every night. Needless to say, I was an obese, ignorant, angry, 300lb, 30 year old, unlearned, well-armed, and all-around horrible person prior to my TBI.
Despite all of my shortcomings though, I wasn’t a complete slouch. Among other things and like many “aspies”, I taught myself how to read by the age of 4 and was taking apart everything in sight to the point of being forced working alongside my grandfather at his electrical contracting and engineering firm by the age of 5. Even though I frustrated and challenged every teacher that I had to the point of them advising me to become a lawyer, I managed to teach myself about computers and ultimately made it to Microsoft with nothing more than 1.9 high school GPA. None of this is unique to me though and was more of a perk of growing up during the Information Age in my opinion.
Even after my TBI though, I still have a tendency to be a dense, pain in the ass at times and the positive changes resulting from this condition were only visible to me in retrospect because of this.
Positive Changes Post-Trauma
Initially, the advantages gained were instinctual and intuitive and they did not register as being different to me while in the moment. My gifts were subtle and crept up on me slowly. I had no idea that the area of my injury was playing a significant role in anything that was going on in my life. In hindsight though, nothing was the same and it seemed as if person that I used to be was cast aside like a corn husk. At first though, the most obvious changes weren’t psychological or intellectual, but physical instead.
Like a child, my inhibitions were non-existent and I had a significant amount of energy at my disposal. Where I normally would have tried to eat myself to death, I had the willpower to eat more consciously and to go to the gym under my own volition; often twice a day. At the time of my accident, I was roughly 300lbs, but presently hover around 200lbs, can row for hours, and carry significantly more muscle than I did prior to my TBI. Eventually, my friends were asking me for health advice and complete strangers around my neighborhood had even taken notice and went out of their way to compliment me on my physical changes.
It had also become apparent that I was also much more empathic, introspective, logical, and humble as well. Sort of like a Vulcan and instead of wanting to be right at all costs, my ego was taken down a few notches and appealing to reason and the truth took precedence over just about anything else. Where I used to care about little more than money, cars, and guns, they became inconsequential to me and have since gotten rid of every gun that I owned. Instead of condemning people that I used to write-off as stupid, delusional, or ignorant, I was much more interested in understanding them and how they could come to such conclusions and was analyzing my own ignorances and delusions just the same.
On top of having a childlike energy though, I also had childlike curiosity and began to question all things related to the status quo and tradition. Like a child asking “why?” all the time, I was asking the same questions, but had the resources and know-how in order to pursue them without having to ask anyone. Rather than watching hours of Fox News and acting as if I knew everything, I began reading and researching maniacally on topics ranging from the Psychology, Physics, Macroeconomics, Philosophy, Epistemology, Computational Theory of Mind, Neurology, Entropy, Statistics, and Systems Theory among other topics. Where I had read maybe three books prior to my TBI, I began reading in my spare time and listening to audiobooks and Great Courses on my hour long commute and frequent trips to the gym and am well into the hundreds by now. I was hooked and my biggest problem to this day is trying to read one book at a time instead of alternating between 5 of them.
Eventually all of this culminated into a focus on advanced topics ranging from but not limited to theoretical physics, the hard problems of consciousness, and the computational theory of mind along with coming up with a few zany ideas of my own. Unfortunately though and while I often learn at a prodigious rate, have a nasty intuition, and am exceptional at a few things as a result of this condition, I’m far from perfect and developing some skillsets, such as my writing, still have to be approached the old fashion way. Obviously, I’m not a physicist or a philosopher and finding a vetting source on any of the weird stuff that I come up can be “challenging”, so all of this is just fun for me to think about for now; although, I have written about few of them:
Disabilities
Contrary to what is often reported in the news about ASS, one common misconception surrounding it is that the abilities resulting from this condition are immediate. Unfortunately, abilities from ASS are anything but sudden and can take days, months, or even years to be realized, regardless of when they manifest. While abilities can be slow to manifest and the pros usually outweigh the cons, disabilities are not as subtle and often seem to be immediate and much more identifiable. Needless to say, things were far from peachy keen, but I still had it easier than a lot of people.
In fact, immediately after my car accident and subsequent TBI though, I probably should have been strapped to a gurney. I was uncontrollable, unconsolable, bleeding heavily from my head, rude to paramedics that were trying to treat me, rude to police when they told me that I didn’t have to direct traffic anymore, and was refusing to go to the hospital. Even though I was bleeding and needed stitches, a good friend ultimately had to “forcefully encourage” me to go to the hospital later that night. After some stitches and an MRI, I got a “have a nice day!” and a $10,000 bill in the mail. Yay!
Once the dust settled, my symptoms were no different than anyone else with a fancy new concussion from what I can tell. Like many people with a TBI and much like a toddler, my emotions were ever-present and I was quick to excite, anger, frustrate, and sadden. All of which was exacerbated by the fact that I had just lost my grandfather. I actually had to miss his funeral because it was held on the day following my accident. Making things even worse, I had to deal with two auto insurance companies at once. Even though there is never a good time for a TBI, it was terrible timing and I felt horrible².
I could barely write an email and my attention span seemed to be shot. I was constantly forgetting my keys, badge, or my laptop for work and would often lose track of what I was trying to accomplish mid-way through. I couldn’t even remember what shirt I had put on when wearing layers. I thought for sure that my memory was fubar. Even worse, I was incredibly sensitive and often found myself crying whenever I had a moment to myself.
On top of emotional overload, memory loss and attention span issues, I still have to deal with a whole new level of anxiety and am much more reclusive to this day. When left to my own devices, I prefer a dark room, my headphones, a book, and solitude. On the rare occasion that I’m actually out socializing and seemingly happy, it’s almost always an act and I cannot wait to go home and be by myself. I still love and appreciate my friends, but my friend base has dwindled a bit and I just don’t enjoy big crowds.
It was a stressful time and transition for me. I was overly focused on the downsides, grieving over my loss, dealing with insurance companies and pretending to be OK because I just started my new job at Microsoft two weeks prior to my car accident. The only thing that I could focus on was the fact that I didn’t want to fall behind at work; even though I was excelling in that regard. At no time did I stop to question if my TBI had unlocked certain abilities.
Getting Help
It goes without saying, but if you believe that you may have ASS after a fancy TBI and muster the courage to walk into a doctors office and be open about it, you better do your research because they just aren’t going to take your word for it. Unfortunately, you can do as little as a few minutes of focused research on this condition and know more about it than most doctors and psychologists; whether they know and accept this themselves is a different story. Most have heard of such situations, but you should expect most of them to lack a fundamental understanding of Savant Syndrome like everyone else. However, most doctors have probably met or heard of plenty of people that acted like a complete loon immediately after a head injury (been there!), which is in the ICD10 and DSM5.
As such and regardless of the merit behind your observations, if you were to say that you believe that you might be more intelligent after a head injury, your doctor, friends, and family are probably going to assume that you are bipolar, demented, or schizophrenic; at least initially. You can almost rest assured, they will begin to ask questions in order to determine whether or not you’re a danger to yourself or others. This isn’t because doctors are being mean or ignorant, but because the likelihood of actually having ASS after a head injury is about as probable as being struck by lightning while on a date with Scarlett Johansson. When considering probability of it all and the fact that I even thought that I was going crazy at first, it would be irrational to fault doctors or anyone else for assuming the same.
My Diagnosis
Again, since these changes could best be described as the product of instinct and a newfound intuition, they crept up on me and I wasn’t really cognizant of them until years later. Even though it was a positive gain when looking at the whole, I didn’t like the notion of not being in control. Regardless of the benefit, I was scared and beginning to question my own sanity and intelligence as a result of this. I had already heard of people made able to play new instruments, speak new languages or do rapid calculations after a TBI, but nothing like what was happening to me and I didn’t know that it was an actual medical condition at the time. Needless to say, it was time to go talk to a doctor for a sanity check.
Thankfully, my psychologist had another patient with a similar experience after a TBI and ASS wasn’t a complete unknown to her as a result. Where I was expecting to be called crazy, after dorking out and rationalizing worldly and existential problems as I saw them, I left that meeting with her calling my mind “tremendous”. I was blown away. I thought that I was going insane and was open to the possibility, but my psychologist helped me quell this by pointing out that crazy people don’t typically accept the possibility that they’re crazy or have a willingness to be wrong. Apparently it’s totally OK to be open minded, analyze your own ignorance, be curious, think freely and differently, read a lot, better yourself, have a lot of energy, and be a bit peculiar at times.
Eventually my own research eventually lead me to Dr. Darold Treffert’s articles and his book, Islands of Genius, where I realized that the location of my head injury, right above my temple, seemed to have more relevance than I was giving it and that my positive changes post-trauma matched up with his description of Acquired Savant Syndrome. After my feedback from my psychologist, I felt perfectly comfortable reaching out and telling him about my situation, with pictures, before/after photos. To my surprise, he responded back to me asking me if I wanted to be on his savant registry, which is the same one as Kim Peek, Temple Grandin, Daniel Tammet, and Derek Amato. As a proper nerd, I couldn’t help but say “OK!!”.
My Accident & TBI
On November 29th, 2013, Black Friday of all days, I was t-boned by a person that failed to yield. She hit me at near full speed and the last thing that I remember before the accident is thinking about what to say at my grandfathers funeral before instinctively slamming on my brakes and bracing for a collision. I was doing roughly 35 mph prior to hitting my brakes, but she had the pedal to the metal when she hit me. After sending me sliding into another lane of traffic, she went on to plow in between a Yukon Denali, a Subaru STI, and an Audi S4. On top of such an impact, my A-pillar airbag didn’t deploy which was conveniently where the left side of my forehead impacted which left me unconscious and not breathing.
The next thing that I know and a few minutes later, I started breathing on my own, came back into consciousness, and was sitting on the floorboards of my car. BMW Assist is screaming at me and I was so out of it that I had to ask them whose blood was on me even though I was the only one in the car. I was completely dazed and had blood running all the way down to my Chucks; but I got up and walked away. I’ve been accused of being hard headed in the past, but I definitely proved it that day.
Prevalence
One of the reasons that I question the prevalence of ASS is simply due to the fact that TBI’s in the left hemisphere of the brain are not exactly a rare occurrence. Back in 2013, the CDC reported that roughly 2.8 million TBIs occur every year in the United States alone. After examining 111 brains of NFL players for instance, Dr. Ann McKee found CTE in 110 of them, which is a lot of head injuries if you ask me. Despite the fact that plenty of TBIs occur around the front of the head and to the left hemisphere of their brain inside and outside of sports, there are no established protocols that account for ASS at the moment; it isn’t even referenced in the DSM5 or ICD10 as of yet.
On top of being deemed “incredibly rare”, unless the symptoms (abilities) resulting from ASS are obvious such as musical, calculative, or linguistic, intellectual gifts resulting from this condition can be contextual and incredibly difficult to identify for most people. Even if ER doctors and medics had the time to look for rare and non life-threatening conditions, which they don’t, ASS is still on the fringes of science and identifying it is far beyond their job description.
Complicating things further and as with plenty of other rare conditions, finding a doctor that knows anything about ASS can be quite challenging. Since there are so few specialists with a background in this condition, the onus is typically on the acquired savant to figure it out for themselves; which is a tall order because more is known about cancer and nuclear fusion than Savant Syndrome. I was ultimately diagnosed with “advanced cognitive and intellectual abilities” for instance, and most people can’t even tell you what cognition means or tell you what the difference is between intelligence and knowledge. I was extremely lucky to have a knack for topics ranging from Psychology, Epistemology, Philosophy, and Neurology as a result of my condition; all of which came in handy while engaging with doctors on matters pertaining to ASS.
Anyone with a rare condition can relate to this though and a common response among anyone living with one is a tendency to hit the books and do their own research; especially if they’re on the Autism spectrum. Ironically, Savant-like abilities are often observed within people with higher functioning forms of Autism and it isn’t uncommon for doctors to learn quite a bit from their patients on these subjects. Even in these cases though, most doctors are focused on trying to steer their patients toward a normal life instead of capitalizing on any of these abilities. Further and while retrograde diagnoses can be subjective and are generally frowned upon, some of the greatest minds to-date have exhibited symptoms eluding to Asperger’s and the Autism Spectrum Disorder. Steve Silberman wrote a fantastic book called Neurotribes which covered some of the positive and quirky aspects of Asperger’s/ASD and I cannot recommend it enough if this topic fascinates you.
Unfortunately though, we seem to know more about Autism than we do about human ability and intellect; which isn’t a lot. Often overlooked, part of becoming more emotionally intelligent is actually hinged on becoming more emotionally sensitive and introspective along with a curiosity of existential topics. Coincidentally, becoming more sensitive in this regard is a common occurrence among TBI patients and I often wonder if others may be focusing too much on what was lost while completely overlooking what may have been gained. After reaching back out to Dr. Darold Treffert, a preeminent authority on Savant Syndrome, it seems as if I am not alone in this sentiment:
“ASS is more prevelent than reported; while sometimes musical, artistic or math skills emerge suddenly, often they occur later; while music, art and math may be more spectacular, increases in executive functioning, empathy and re-arrangements of priorities (for the better) occur less often…Some persons fail to discuss positive trade-off because they fear others will think they are “crazy” or losing their mind rather than gaining some mind.” -Darold Treffert
Summary
When considering the sheer amount of TBI’s happening every day in conjunction with the understanding that little is known about ASS, that no medical professionals are looking for it, that imposter syndrome and self doubt is inherent with it, and the opinion of authorities on the matter, I have found no reason to doubt the possibility of it being more prevalent. Obviously, I’m not implying that there is always beneficial trade-off, but there certainly can be under some circumstances and the possibility of advantages should not be ruled out by default.
While I have no problem accepting the likelihood of Acquired Savant Syndrome being as rare as it is presently believed to be, the notion of potentially brilliant people overlooking such gifts while trying to be “normal” (average?) is a horrifying prospect for me. Alexander Graham Bell once famously said “When one door closes another door opens, but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.” and this seems to be no less true for TBIs and other disabilities alike.
A few books that helped me:
