THE UNKNOWN: Savant Syndromes

With only 319 cases reported throughout history, Savant Syndromes are some of the most mysterious medical conditions in the world. They lead to extraordinary abilities—things like art, music, and mathematics—even when the subject has never studied or practiced the skill before. Scientists still aren’t sure what causes savant syndrome—which has made some researchers wonder if they are linked to telepathic abilities or even a past life.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:32Rasha Pecoraro?

  There are a lot of things I dreamed about doing when I was younger that didn't pan out quite how I'd hoped. Kind of like when I was training to be an Olympic softball player back in the day, but enough about my failed dream. Raise your hand if your parents spent their hard-earned money on things like ballet, piano lessons, or even painting classes just because you expressed interest in it for all of 10 seconds as a kid. You can't see it, but I'm raising my hand. My sister's raising her hand.

• 1:08Rasha Pecoraro?

  I've been with my wife for over 16 years, and I'm still desperately wanting to be fluent in Spanish. Hello, Duolingo and Rosetta Stone. Muchas gracias. Thank you for your help, but I'm not there yet. They do say, though, that practice makes perfect, but practice can be time-consuming, daunting, boring at times. And being good at something from the get-go is way more fun. I think if most of us could snap our fingers and have a brand-new skill, we would do it in a heartbeat. But that's impossible, right?

• 1:44Yvette Gentile?

  Well, maybe not. There's a medical mystery out there known as Savant Syndrome, where after some sort of injury or disorder, a person gains inexplicable skills. And sometimes, it happens totally randomly, after no triggering incident at all. Like someone becomes a human calculator, or they can paint like Leonardo da Vinci, or even play Chopin without ever having touched a piano before.

• 2:14Yvette Gentile?

  In 2021, only 319 cases of Sabat syndrome had been reported throughout history. But every story is more remarkable than the last. And the science behind how and why it happens is so mysterious that some have turned to the supernatural for explanations. Welcome back. I'm Yvette Gentile.

• 2:42Rasha Pecoraro?

  And I'm her sister, Rasha Pecoraro. This is So Supernatural.

• 3:20Yvette Gentile?

  The human brain is an incredible mystery. You have to think about this. It only weighs about three pounds, so roughly 2% of your total body weight. But in spite of its small size, it contains about 86 billion brain cells known as neurons. All those neurons work together to help you think, feel, and remember in a way that makes you exactly who you are. They also help your body run, making sure your heart keeps beating, your lungs keep breathing, and your digestive system keeps stirring.

• 4:01Yvette Gentile?

  It also creates your thoughts, your feelings, your unique personality. And the terrifying flip side is that if that squishy, delicate organ ever gets damaged, it could fundamentally change who we are.

• 4:20Rasha Pecoraro?

  All it takes is a bad bump on the head. I have had several mild concussions playing softball over the years, so I can relate. Or you could suffer a stroke or even a seizure and the brain can be rewired. In devastating situations, there's patients who've had to completely relearn how to walk and speak. But that's not always the case. In fact, there's a few rare patients who've gained something incredible after a condition like that. Like a brand-new skill that they never had before. And usually, they're really good at it without any practice or any training.

• 5:05Yvette Gentile?

  This is part of a phenomenon known as Savant Syndrome. But it doesn't just appear after injuries. It can also show up in people who are neurodivergent or who have a developmental disorder. For example, an autistic person might be able to do advanced mathematical calculations in their head. Or someone with a limited ability to read or write might be able to play a particular song on the piano flawlessly without ever seeing the sheet music. These skills appear more or less overnight. The person doesn't practice or spend a whole lot of time learning to do these incredible things.

• 5:48Yvette Gentile?

  They just sit down one day and seem to be experts.

• 5:53Rasha Pecoraro?

  The phenomenon was first discovered by a doctor named J. Langdon Down. In the 1880s, he was working in London researching developmental disorders. In fact, he's the person who scientifically categorized Down Syndrome, which is named after him. All to say, Dr. Down spends his whole career helping people who struggle to think clearly, learn new ideas, or perform everyday tasks. This includes what we now call autistic people. And at some point in the 1880s, Down notices something interesting. One time, he's treating a child who has an intellectual disability.

• 6:38Rasha Pecoraro?

  They can barely speak, read, or write. But during their session, the child picks up a piece of paper and starts sketching. And the art they create is incredible. It's highly detailed. The proportions and layout are perfect. Most people would need to study composition for years to make something like this. And Down's patient has never been to art school. Down doesn't understand how they're doing this, but he's focused on other medical issues, so he doesn't take the time to investigate the skill much further. At least, not until he encounters a similar case later on.

• 7:18Yvette Gentile?

  We know at some point during his research, Down is seeing another patient, a little boy. And Down notices this boy is obsessed with a particular book called "The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire." And y'all, it is not exactly light-reading material. Let me just tell you, there are more than 450 pages with very, very tiny print. But the patient hasn't just read the book. They've memorized the entire thing, word for word. Dr. Down actually follows along as his patient rattles off long passages

• 8:01Yvette Gentile?

  without making a single mistake. The patient then says they can also recite the book backwards, word for word.

• 8:14Rasha Pecoraro?

  So for example, there's a passage that reads, "The pride of royalty was humbled in the dust. He took his repast on the ground, and the disorder of his hair expressed the grief and anxiety of his mind."

• 8:30Rasha Pecoraro?

  Then, the patient flawlessly recites the sentences backwards, saying, "Mind his of anxiety and grief; the expressed hair, his of disorder; thee and ground, the on repast; his took, he dusted; the in humbled, was royalty of pride, thee." End quote. And if you stuck with me for that long, thank you. Had to record that a few times, but the patient doesn't make a single mistake. So understandably, Dr. Down is astonished.

• 9:09Yvette Gentile?

  To say the least. But it's around this time that he pays much closer attention to his other patients' abilities, to see if anyone else can do these incredible things. And sure enough, he finds more patients with these abilities. When he writes about them, he's pretty vague, so we don't have many details. But he mentions how one person can solve advanced math problems instantly in their head, and someone else has an impressive musical talent. Another has the uncanny ability to know exactly what time it is, down to the second, without ever looking at a clock.

• 9:52Rasha Pecoraro?

  Now, Dr. Down wants to know how common this is outside of his own patients. So he reviews all of the medical literature that he can find. And there's a report from over a century before, in the year 1783. That year, a medical researcher wrote a paper about a man named Jedediah Buxton. Jedediah was born in England in the year 1707. And based on the way that people from this time wrote about him, many historians believe he was autistic. It's hard to say for sure, though, because doctors didn't even know about autism yet. So he never got a formal diagnosis. Still, this was his story.

• 10:37Rasha Pecoraro?

  In 1719, when Jedediah was 12 years old, he became obsessed with numbers and with math. It was almost like overnight, he developed a new fixation. And all of a sudden, he started spending all day, every day, practicing addition, subtraction, and multiplication, even when he was supposed to be helping out on the farm where he and his family worked. In fact, each time he went to the fields to plant or harvest, he would take just one look around and say something like, "This field is 400 square feet. There are 10 rows of wheat spaced four feet apart." Then he'd predict exactly how many seeds they needed to plant,

• 11:21Rasha Pecoraro?

  or how many bushels they'd gather. And it's not like he was running around with a yardstick. He was making these calculations in his head, just based on what he saw in the field, and he was always right. He also never forgot a number. People could approach Jedediah weeks or months after he'd figured all of this out, and he'd still remember exactly how many plants were growing, how much they'd yielded, I mean, we're talking everything.

• 11:54Yvette Gentile?

  Yeah, that is an incredible case. And it's not the only one Dr. Dowen finds. There's another from 1789 about a man named Thomas Fuller. Thomas was a black man who was born in Africa in 1710, and then he was kidnapped by enslavers as a teen, taken to the United States in 1724, and sold into captivity in Virginia. Like many enslaved people, Thomas never learned to read or write, and he never attended a single math class. On top of that, many historians believe Thomas was developmentally disabled.

• 12:36Yvette Gentile?

  He never saw a doctor or received a diagnosis. So again, we don't know exactly what he was dealing with, but I am sure he was dealing with severe hardship. But a lot of people who met him seem to claim he struggled with complex ideas and couldn't learn new concepts easily. In spite of that, he taught himself how to count first to ten and then to a hundred. And before he knew it, he was also performing these elaborate calculations in his head. Again, the transformation was sudden and impossible to explain.

• 13:20Yvette Gentile?

  Once his enslaver learned about Thomas's skills, she called in experts to talk to Thomas and test him. This included two men from Pennsylvania named William Hartshorn and Samuel Coats. They both asked Thomas things like, "How many seconds will pass in a year and a half?" And Thomas didn't use a pen and paper. He just immediately replied that there are forty-seven million, three-hundred-and-four-thousand seconds in a year and a half. Let me just save y'all the work of Googling that. It is absolutely correct. Then, either William or Samuel asked Thomas a harder question.

• 14:05Yvette Gentile?

  "How many seconds are there in seventy years, seventeen days, and twelve hours?" Thomas then replies, "There are two billion, two-hundred, ten million, five-hundred-thousand, eight-hundred seconds." Like, what?

• 14:23Rasha Pecoraro?

  Yeah.

• 14:24Yvette Gentile?

  So his interrogators say something like, "Ha! Okay, I gotcha. You're close to the answer, but it's actually lower than that." Well, get this. Thomas simply asked if William and Samuel remembered to account for leap years. It turns out, they hadn't. Once they added them in, they realized Thomas was correct again. He did a better job of adding than the men who were sent to test him. The two men thought it was a shame Thomas didn't get the education he deserved. But, in Mr. Fuller's own words, this is what he said.

• 15:07Yvette Gentile?

  "Many learned men be great fools." Thomas Fuller was a notable individual with Savant Syndrome, known for his extraordinary memory and mental abilities. He lived until 1790, passing away at the age of eighty.

• 15:28Rasha Pecoraro?

  Lots of reporters, doctors, and political activists wrote about Thomas and his abilities during his lifetime. But they weren't that interested in the medical explanations for why he could do these calculations. Instead, they were focused on how his skills could influence the politics around slavery. Abolitionists loved telling his story because Thomas's abilities proved that black people were just as smart and just as capable as anyone else. And it helped their argument that enslavement is, and always will be, immoral.

• 16:07Rasha Pecoraro?

  However, Dr. Down feels frustrated when he reads Thomas's story 99 years later in 1887 because he wants to understand where these abilities came from and how they worked. And as far as he can tell, nobody else ever asked those questions before, even though the phenomenon has been around for at least a century, possibly longer. If he wants to really understand what's going on, Dr. Down needs to do his own research. And as soon as he dives into the topic, he realizes the phenomenon isn't limited to people with developmental disorders.

• 16:50Rasha Pecoraro?

  Apparently, these abilities can arise in what we now call neurotypical people too. It's just a question of how.

• 17:06Speaker 04

  Hi, I'm Ashley Flowers.

• 17:07Speaker 05

  And I'm Britt. And if you're on the edge of your seat listening to this show, Crime Junkie needs to be your next listen.

• 17:13Speaker 04

  Every Monday, I dive into a new true crime case that our reporting team has been on the ground looking into. From lesser-known disappearances to the most chilling cases hitting the headlines. And I'm gonna walk you through it the way I tell my best friend, because, well, that's what I'm doing.

• 17:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's me. And I'm right there with you as we listen together, react to every wild detail, and of course, I ask all the questions.

• 17:37Speaker 04

  Now I'm gonna have the answers because we have case files. We're talking to detectives and family members and we're gonna stay focused on the facts.

• 17:44Speaker 05

  So if you're not already listening to Crime Junkie, what are you waiting for? There are over 300 episodes available right now.

• 17:50Speaker 04

  And you can listen to new episodes of Crime Junkie every Monday, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 18:02Yvette Gentile?

  In 1887, Dr. Langdon Downe was finding that some autistic people, or those with developmental disabilities, could memorize whole books backward and forward, or do complicated math in their heads. They'd never studied or practiced these skills. They seemed to pop up out of nowhere. The problem was, nobody had ever studied the phenomenon to learn what caused it. So Downe finds 10 people who seem to have these unusual abilities. Half of them are what we would now diagnose as autistic. The other half have some other kind of central nervous system injury or disease. Here's what he learns.

• 18:47Yvette Gentile?

  All of his patients struggle with complex concepts and abstract ideas. And they also have lower-than-average IQs, but each of them is incredibly talented in at least one field, usually math, music, or the ability to memorize facts and figures. He also finds that most of his patients have incredible memories. They can all recall facts, mathematical equations, or other information as long as it relates to the field they're an expert in. So someone with a strong musical ability can recite melodies, chord structures, and beats,

• 19:30Yvette Gentile?

  but they may not remember anything that's irrelevant to music, like how to spell a word or follow a certain recipe. In 1887, after compiling all of his findings, Down gives this phenomenon a name: Savant Syndrome. Savant comes from the French word savoir, which means "to know." And Down's findings hold up for the next century and a half. People have built on his work and explored the topic more. In the meantime, several savants become incredibly famous for their abilities. Take, for example, a man named Kim Peek.

• 20:14Yvette Gentile?

  He was born on November 11, 1951. He was missing a particular bundle of nerves in his brain. So Kim's left hemisphere couldn't speak to the right one, and vice versa. As a result, he had a lower-than-average IQ. Kim also struggled a lot with coordination and movement. Simple everyday activities like getting dressed were impossible without help. In spite of that, Kim had a fantastic memory. He never forgot anything. He also always knew what day of the week a given date landed on. One time, a journalist mentioned to Kim

• 20:56Yvette Gentile?

  that he'd been born on March 31, 1956. And without skipping a beat, Kim said, "That was a Saturday on Easter weekend." He also memorized 12,000 different books during his lifetime. And you could have named any town or city in the United States, and Kim would have told you its zip code, area code, and what channel each local TV station broadcast on. I mean, that is remarkable.

• 21:28Rasha Pecoraro?

  It is remarkable. Daniel Tamet had an equally as impressive story. He was born in London in 1979. And at first, he seemed like a typical kid, though he had wild tantrums as a baby, as many of us do. However, in 1983, when he was just four years old, Daniel had a seizure.

• 21:51Yvette Gentile?

  It turned out he had undiagnosed epilepsy. And while his parents scrambled to find a treatment plan that worked for him, Daniel discovered his amazing mathematical abilities. Like many other savants we've discussed, Daniel could solve complicated equations in his head. But he's most famous for being able to recite pi to 22,514 decimal places.

• 22:22Rasha Pecoraro?

  Okay, this is way above my pay grade or Yvette's pay grade, but let's just say this in layman terms. For context, it takes Daniel more than five hours just to say all of those digits out loud. So this is a very impressive feat.

• 22:40Yvette Gentile?

  So y'all, we could go on and on. But there are many well-known savants, despite the fact that the condition is super rare. A 2021 research study from the University of Wisconsin and an autism research institute called the Treffer Center said there are only 319 recorded cases ever. But that could be a gross underestimate, because it's possible there are a bunch of savants out there who haven't come forward, you know, about their skills. Some researchers believe that anywhere between 10 to 30% of autistic people could have some level of savant skills.

• 23:24Yvette Gentile?

  And it also seems to be more common in men than in women, at a rate of about 4 to 1. But again, it's possible that many female savants go undiscovered because of issues of, you know, hello, gender bias. The reality is, it's been almost 150 years since Dr. Down named the phenomenon. But there's still a lot we don't understand about savant syndrome. Like, for instance, what causes it?

• 23:58Rasha Pecoraro?

  Well, modern day researchers have a lot of theories about that. One says that when a person's brain is underdeveloped in one area, it compensates by becoming overdeveloped in another. So if someone has a learning disability or struggles to pick up social cues due to autism, the trade-off is that they become really good at, say, music or math. Another theory is that Savant syndrome is actually a symptom of autism. Autistic people can become fixated on one topic they find fascinating. It could be anything,

• 24:37Rasha Pecoraro?

  but some common obsessions include trains, dinosaurs, maps, Lego. The idea is that if someone is always thinking about, say, dates, or equations, or chord progressions, naturally, they'll become very good at that thing, even if they've never taken an advanced math class or sat down in front of a piano. There's just one problem with all of these theories, though. They hinge on the idea that savants are born with brains that work a little differently from everyone else's.

• 25:15Yvette Gentile?

  But this isn't always the case, because some people don't develop their abilities until much later in life. And usually, these people are not born neurodivergent. But after an injury or illness damages their brain, these talents suddenly just pop up out of nowhere, and without any practice or preparation in advance. And it can also occur in people with degenerative disorders like dementia. And when this happens, it's called acquired savant syndrome.

• 25:49Rasha Pecoraro?

  Take this story from 1994. That's when a 42-year-old surgeon named Tony Sikoria was spending a relaxing day at a lake in upstate New York, until a terrible thunderstorm came rolling in. He stepped into a phone booth to make a quick call, but after he stepped out of the booth, lightning struck, literally. A bolt hit him hard enough to knock him down and make his heart stop. A bystander luckily saved his life by performing CPR. But when Tony woke up, he was in horrible pain. Tony spent weeks going to endless doctor's appointments.

• 26:32Rasha Pecoraro?

  All of his physicians told him that by some kind of miracle, he didn't have any permanent damage. But even if Tony wasn't hurt, he felt like he'd changed somehow. Especially one night, a month or two after the lightning strike, when he dreamt about beautiful music. As soon as he woke up from the dream, he had an overwhelming compulsion to write the music down. But it was hard because he'd never studied the subject outside of a handful of piano lessons when he was a child. The same thing happened the next night. He once again dreamt of beautiful music, but didn't know how to write it down once he was up.

• 27:17Rasha Pecoraro?

  Then it happened again the night after that, and every time he went to sleep, it just kept on happening. Tony began taking lessons to improve his skills until he was actually able to play and transcribe the amazing songs that were in his head. Within a few years, he began performing classical music professionally and even composing his own work.

• 27:43Yvette Gentile?

  Something just as wild happened to a woman whose identity isn't public, but we're just gonna call her Renee. In the 2010s, Renee was a college student in the United States when she went on a ski trip. As she was going down a mountain, she hit a patch of slippery ice while going way too fast and fell hard enough to lose consciousness, even though she was wearing a helmet. When she woke up, Renee wasn't in any pain. She didn't seem to have any broken bones or visible injuries, and she wasn't bleeding. So she figured she probably wasn't badly hurt and decided to get back on the slopes. I don't know if that was a good idea, Renee. I'm just saying.

• 28:26Rasha Pecoraro?

  Yeah, I can agree.

• 28:28Yvette Gentile?

  Anyhow, later that night, she realized she had made a bad decision because Renee developed an intense headache that was almost debilitating. The pain was so severe she couldn't even sleep. She tried self-medicating with alcohol. Again, another poor decision. And unsurprisingly, that didn't help her either. The next day, Renee drove back to campus, but within a few hours of getting home, she checked into a nearby hospital for treatment. Her doctors diagnosed her with a concussion, a broken collarbone, and a dislocated shoulder. I mean, it is amazing to me

• 29:11Yvette Gentile?

  that she failed to notice these injuries earlier. I mean, and to say she wasn't in any pain with all of that? That's just craziness.

• 29:20Rasha Pecoraro?

  Mind-boggling.

• 29:21Yvette Gentile?

  Renee's doctors gave her medicine and advice on how to treat it all and then just sent her home. But Renee's headaches didn't go away. It got more intense. And a few days after the injury, Renee developed a new symptom. She'd be walking down a street or across campus, and she'd pass a building that she'd only been inside, I don't know, maybe once or twice, somewhere she wasn't super familiar with. But suddenly, these images would appear in her mind, crystal clear, plain as day. Foyers, hallways, rooms, elevator banks, balconies. Basically, she could see the interior layout

• 30:05Yvette Gentile?

  of the building perfectly, even though she'd barely spent any time there. Eventually, Renee went back to the hospital to complain that her migraine headaches weren't getting any better. And she also mentioned these mental flashes she'd been having. And a doctor diagnosed her with acquired savant syndrome. They said that she had "perfect, flawless memories," but only for building layouts. If she ever set foot somewhere at any point in her life, she could accurately recall it. Even minor details like the location of doors, windows, furniture, and so on.

• 30:50Yvette Gentile?

  Unfortunately, her memory of everything else was still the same as it always was. She still had to work hard and study in her classes. And since Renee wasn't majoring in architecture or interior design, she didn't know how to put her skills to use. I guess it probably made for a pretty cool party trick, though. What else is she gonna use it for?

• 31:15Rasha Pecoraro?

  There is one thing about Renee's story that I do find especially fascinating. If she's able to remember buildings she visited before her ski accident, that suggests this isn't a new ability. I mean, these memories were all stored somewhere in her brain well before she got hurt on the slopes. Then, her injury may have just unlocked them. Which could disprove the theories we've covered earlier. Remember, a lot of doctors said people's brains might develop savant abilities to compensate for damage or developmental issues elsewhere.

• 31:56Rasha Pecoraro?

  But Renee wasn't compensating for anything until after she hit her head. Maybe she had the potential to become a savant the whole time. And maybe we all can discover special abilities, too. It's just a matter of figuring out where the on/off switch is. And according to some accounts, it seems possible to do this without any sort of illness or injury at all.

• 32:31Speaker 04

  Hi, I'm Ashley Flowers.

• 32:33Speaker 05

  And I'm Britt. And if you're on the edge of your seat, listening to this show, Crime Junkie needs to be your next listen.

• 32:39Speaker 04

  Every Monday, I dive into a new true crime case that our reporting team has been on the ground looking into. From lesser-known disappearances to the most chilling cases hitting the headlines. And I'm gonna walk you through it the way I tell my best friend, because, well, that's what I'm doing.

• 32:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's me. And I'm right there with you as we listen together, react to every wild detail, and of course, I ask all the questions.

• 33:02Speaker 04

  And I'm gonna have the answers, because we have case files. We're talking to detectives and family members, and we're gonna stay focused on the facts.

• 33:09Speaker 05

  So if you're not already listening to Crime Junkie, what are you waiting for? There are over 300 episodes available right now.

• 33:16Speaker 04

  And you can listen to new episodes of Crime Junkie every Monday, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 33:26Yvette Gentile?

  In 1887, Dr. Lenden Down first identified Savant Syndrome, a condition where people with head injuries or disorders possess incredible abilities. To this day, nobody knows where the phenomenon comes from. But it could be something we're all capable of. We just need to figure out how to trigger it.

• 33:51Rasha Pecoraro?

  After all, plenty of people get head injuries and never develop Savant Syndrome, myself included. In fact, acquired Savant Syndrome is even rarer than the kind that appears in those with intellectual disabilities and autism. Remember earlier how we mentioned there's only been 319 reported cases of confirmed Savant's as of the year 2021? Well, only 32 of those cases involved people who discovered their talents later in childhood or adulthood, in what's called Acquired Savant Syndrome.

• 34:32Yvette Gentile?

  There's another scenario that's even rarer, though: Sudden Savant Syndrome. And that's when someone doesn't have a brain injury, a disorder, or autism. But for some reason, and we're not exactly sure why, savant abilities just appear out of nowhere one day. And there are only 11 known cases of Sudden Savant Syndrome in all of history. And they're pretty incredible.

• 35:04Rasha Pecoraro?

  Take this story from a 28-year-old lawyer who lives outside of the US in the mid-2000s. His name isn't public information, but we'll just call him Caleb. One day, Caleb is at a shopping mall with some friends. They all see a piano sitting out in the open. Nobody's playing it, and the other customers seem to just be ignoring it. Even though Caleb has never formally studied music, he gets this sudden impulse. He needs to play this piano. So he sits down on the bench, spreads his hands across the keys, and starts playing a beautiful song. Once it's finished, he plays another one, and even one more after that.

• 35:49Rasha Pecoraro?

  His friends are totally shocked. They ask him when he learned all of these songs, and Caleb doesn't know the answer. It's like his ability just burst out of him from nowhere. Or like he suddenly developed Savant Syndrome, which seems almost impossible because, as far as we can tell, he's never had a head injury or a developmental disability. But as time goes on, he finds himself more and more drawn to music. He eventually becomes a semi-professional pianist, squeezing in performances in and around his busy schedule as a lawyer. That's pretty cool.

• 36:31Yvette Gentile?

  Doesn't this remind you, you know, like when you've watched 2020 and you see these young kids that come on and they're like maybe five or seven and they have the ability to sing opera or play an instrument and they've never been taught anything, right?

• 36:47Rasha Pecoraro?

  Yeah, it's, it's pretty amazing.

• 36:49Yvette Gentile?

  Just comes out of nowhere. Well, in a similar way, sudden savant syndrome changed one woman's life in 2016. Again, we don't know her identity or where she lives, but we do know she works as a real estate agent and she didn't have any previous head injuries or developmental disorders that we know of. So we'll call her Emily. Emily was never really interested in art or sketching, but one night in December of 2016, she wakes up with an overwhelming urge. She needs to draw something.

• 37:29Yvette Gentile?

  So Emily gets out of bed and spends hours doodling triangles and other geometric designs. The sun rises and she can't stop. She needs to keep drawing all through the next day and the one after that. For three days straight, Emily creates these sketches and she only stops when she has to eat, use the bathroom, or take care of other necessities. And the finished drawings are impressive, the sort of thing you'd expect a professional to create. Time goes on and her new skill changes her life. Today, she works as a full-time artist, still handling real estate work on the side, all

• 38:14Yvette Gentile?

  because of a sudden ability that just completely appeared out of nowhere.

• 38:21Rasha Pecoraro?

  This whole thing is so scientifically mysterious that some researchers have turned to alternate explanations to try and understand it, including the supernatural. Take Dr. Diane Powell, for example. She's an Oregon-based neuroscientist who studies savant syndrome, and she has a deep interest in the occult. Like a lot of other experts, she knows savants tend to develop skills that have to do with math, music, timekeeping, and so forth. But she also believes there's another skill many savants have, one that a lot of scientists aren't willing to acknowledge.

• 39:06Rasha Pecoraro?

  She thinks that some savants could have extrasensory perception, otherwise known as ESP. In Dr. Powell's opinion, all people are actually capable of ESP. The problem is, most of us never develop powers because ESP is hard to learn and hard to master, and there are usually easier ways to communicate.

• 39:33Rasha Pecoraro?

  But some people can't communicate verbally. That's the case for three out of 10 autistic people.

• 39:42Rasha Pecoraro?

  This is called minimally verbal autism. Dr. Powell believes non-speaking autistic people are especially motivated to find ways to make their thoughts, their opinions, and their feelings known. So these individuals might be more likely to become savants, specifically savants with telepathy, or the ability to read minds. Dr. Powell shares her theories with documentarian Kai Dickens in her podcast, The Telepathy Tapes.

• 40:16Yvette Gentile?

  This is a remarkable series, y'all. And if you haven't listened, I suggest you do because it is completely fascinating. Well, throughout the series, Kai records a number of studies conducted by various experts. And they're trying to learn if some savants can actually read people's minds. In one study, a young girl sits in a room while her therapist is in another. The therapist thinks of a random number. And the non-verbal autistic girl types the answer on a computer since she can't say it out loud. And get this. The girl correctly predicts what the number the therapist is thinking nine times out of 10.

• 41:03Rasha Pecoraro?

  That's incredible. Well, Dr. Powell runs another study that also features an autistic, non-speaking child, a young boy. For his experiment, Powell shuffles a deck of Uno cards. She draws one at random, then asks the test subject what color and number is on the Uno card. This subject doesn't have a computer, but he does have a big board with every letter printed on it. Also, it has the numbers 0 through 9. That way, the boy can spell out the color and point at the right number. He gets it right, literally, 100% of the time.

• 41:43Yvette Gentile?

  There are even more experiments beyond that, like where they see if the autistic savants can predict the color of a particular Lego piece without ever seeing it. Or they blindfold a young, non-speaking autistic girl, then see if she can predict what came out of a random number generator. These tests keep having incredible results. One subject is 95% accurate. Another correctly diagnoses a family friend's medical issue, even though she's never studied medicine or examined the friend. She just overhears a conversation about the person's symptoms and offers an answer.

• 42:30Rasha Pecoraro?

  But if you're like me, you may be asking one question right about now. If so many autistic people have such powerful abilities, why don't we see this more often? Why can't we just say, "Case closed, ESP is real, we proved it"?

• 42:49Yvette Gentile?

  Well, Kai Dickens, the documentarian, wonders the same thing. And when she asked one of the subjects, they use a letter board to give the following answer: "These powers only work if you believe in them." The issue is that lots of people don't believe in ESP. And of course, this includes a bunch of skeptics who have reviewed Dr. Powell's work and critiqued it pretty harshly. For example, remember the test we described before with the Uno cards? Dr. Powell drew a random card and didn't show it to the test subject. But she did show it to the boy's mother.

• 43:31Yvette Gentile?

  And then the boy's mother helped her son with the answers, supposedly. Basically, the boy had poor hand-eye coordination because of his autism. So he couldn't hold the board and point out his answers at the same time. His mother held it for him. But she didn't say anything to him out loud. I guess the problem was that when her son was about to point at the wrong answer, she shifted the board so the correct response was under his finger. This was clearly visible in the video footage from the test. Now, I'm not sure the mother was trying to cheat on purpose, but maybe she wasn't consciously aware that she was shifting the board.

• 44:16Yvette Gentile?

  I mean, or perhaps she assumed her son wanted to point at the right answer, so she adjusted it to be closer to his hand. The point is, a lot of experts think the Uno test results aren't legitimate.

• 44:32Rasha Pecoraro?

  Well, there were a few times where Kai recorded studies with non-speaking children whose parents didn't believe in ESP or mind reading. And guess what? Those subjects tended to fail pretty consistently. That was enough for skeptics to dismiss Dr. Powell and Kai's work entirely. The fact that the state of Oregon suspended Dr. Powell's license for shoddy medical practices in 2011 doesn't really help her credibility either. She was reinstated the next year, though, but as of this recording, her license to practice lapsed entirely in the year 2024.

• 45:15Rasha Pecoraro?

  And it's important to us to include these criticisms because autistic people can be vulnerable, especially those who are non-verbal. If the experiments are rigged, it means the people running them are literally putting words into the subjects' mouths. And many of these children don't have the ability to verbally explain what's going on and set the record straight for themselves.

• 45:43Yvette Gentile?

  Although we have some doubts about Dr. Powell's studies, we still have to acknowledge that scientists don't know where savant syndromes come from, meaning we don't want to rule out the idea that these abilities might still be supernatural. Take, for example, some researchers think savant syndrome might be evidence that reincarnation exists. After all, lots of savants have unusually good memories, as Dr. Down discovered back in 1887. So the theory goes that when savants seem to develop advanced skills, they're actually remembering things they learned during a previous lifetime.

• 46:28Rasha Pecoraro?

  For example, in 2018, a group of scientists in Sri Lanka noticed an interesting trend. Several children who said they remembered past lives were later diagnosed as autistic. It almost seemed like autistic people were more likely to remember their past lives compared to the general population. But it would take more study and a larger sample size of cases to say that for sure.

• 47:00Yvette Gentile?

  A writer and researcher named Michael Jauer thinks he knows why autistic people may be more open to past life recollection. Michael says autistic people are often more physically sensitive than other people. For example, lots of people don't mind foods with unusual textures, or a tag on the back of a shirt tickling their skin. But for some autistic people, these sensations can be torture. Also, they might focus on it more if a half-forgotten memory of a past life flits through their mind, or if they recall an ability that they never learned in this existence.

• 47:43Yvette Gentile?

  That might be why savant syndrome is more common among autistic people.

• 47:48Rasha Pecoraro?

  Acquired savant syndrome and sudden savant syndrome are a little harder to explain, but we've covered reincarnation before on this show, go listen if you already haven't. And we have to acknowledge that we still don't know why some people remember past lives and others don't. That being said, we have to acknowledge another theory, also from Michael. He believes autistic people are more likely to see ghosts. Again, because they're just more open to certain sensations. So they're less likely to ignore eerie feelings or movement out of the corner of their eyes.

• 48:32Rasha Pecoraro?

  And maybe they can pick up psychic communications too, meaning maybe they're learning their savant abilities from spirits or some other plane or dimension.

• 48:43Yvette Gentile?

  But most scientists think savant syndrome can be explained through biology, not the supernatural. Many researchers believe savants tend to have damage or developmental problems in the left hemisphere of the brain, where logical reasoning and language occurs. So one theory is that if the left hemisphere isn't working the way it's supposed to, the brain compensates by overdeveloping certain skills.

• 49:15Yvette Gentile?

  Except it's still not clear where sudden savant syndrome comes from. The brain wouldn't have to compensate if the person has never experienced a traumatic injury. And it also doesn't explain how acquired savant syndrome can develop basically overnight after an injury. But some researchers think we all have these dormant abilities that in rare cases can be unlocked. The question science is still trying to answer is, how exactly?

• 49:51Rasha Pecoraro?

  Even after nearly 150 years of study, scientists still don't know what causes this phenomenon, which means the answer could be just about anything. There might be a biological root cause we just haven't identified yet. Or it could be something a bit more mystical, something that pushes the boundaries of what we consider possible. One fact is absolutely true. The human mind is capable of incredible things that scientists just don't understand.

• 50:32Rasha Pecoraro?

  Even if you don't believe savants are telepathic or are able to remember past lives, you can still be open to the idea that these phenomena might truly exist. And the key to understanding them might lie deep within each one of us.

• 51:02Yvette Gentile?

  This is So Supernatural, an AudioChuck original, produced by Crime House. You can connect with us on Instagram at So Supernatural Pod and visit our website at so-supernaturalpodcast.com. Join Rash and me next Friday for an all-new episode.

• 51:22Yvette Gentile?

  I think Chuck would approve.

• 51:28Speaker 06

  When the nights grow longer, the shadows start to stir. And that can only mean one thing. Full Body Chills is back. This season, step inside original tales where every doorway leads somewhere darker, every stranger carries a secret, and nothing is ever quite what it seems. Each story takes you somewhere new, but be careful. You never know what might follow you home. So gather round, listen close, and stream Full Body Chills wherever you get your podcasts.