Researchers at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT report in the Feb. 13 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience that mice genetically engineered to lack a key protein used for building synapses-the junctions through which brain cells communicate-actually learned a spatial memory task faster and better than normal mice. But when tested weeks later, they couldn’t remember what they had learned as well as normal mice, and they had trouble remembering contexts that should have provoked fear.
“These opposite effects on different types of learning are reminiscent of the mixed features of autistic patients, who may be disabled in some cognitive areas but show enhanced abilities in others,” said Albert Y. Hung, a postdoctoral associate at the Picower Institute, staff neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and co-author of the study. “The superior learning ability of these mutant mice in a specific realm is reminiscent of human autistic savants.”
It’s been a long time since I read the book, but I don’t recall that Charley was a savant…I believe he was supposed to be mentally retarded, but not, from what I recall, anyway, autistic.
Here is an amazing google video about Daniel Tammet, a 48 min documentary titled, ‘The Boy With The Incredible Brain.’ As I recall, he’s a highly functioning autistic guy with an ability to calculate (actually just visualize) answers to arithmetic problems of gigantic proportions. He also learned Icelandic language in 1 week. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4913196365903075662&hl=en-AU
I read an article several years ago that said that, if one part of the brain’s funciton is suppressed, another may become hyperdeveloped. This explains hyperlexia–when kids can read at a rediculously early age but have great difficulty learning to speak. What the researchers did was they took volunteers with normal brain function and somehow suppressed part of their brains and a number of volunteers reported feeling hightened awarness in senses controlled by other parts of the brain.