When a baseball hit Orlando Serrell in the head in 1979, the then 10-year-old fell to the ground and stayed that way for a few moments. He left with a headache and continued the game. He did not tell his parents about the accident, so he does not receive proper medical treatment, despite the headaches that lasted for months. But then something happens that will change his life: he becomes a savant, writes Telegrafi.
Immediately after the injury, the media began calling him the "calendar brain," and his name became famous all over the world. Serrelli can actually make complex calendar calculations with astonishing speed and accuracy. He remembers things in minute detail: what his friend was wearing on a certain day last year, the license plate numbers of cars passing in front of him, his daily meals, the weather every day since the day of his accident...
Brain damage, usually to the left hemisphere, unlocks something in the brain when the right hemisphere tries to compensate for the damage. Such results are rare. However, this has raised the dilemma among scientists as to whether the savant inclination is in each of us.
Neuropsychiatrist Allan Snyder, one of the world's leading theorists of human cognition, says we all have Serrell's abilities.
"We remember almost everything, but we remember very little," says Snyder. "Is this strange? Everything is there. Buried deep in our brains are phenomenal abilities that we somehow lose when we develop into 'normal' creatures. However, we have to do something to wake them up."
"Music, art, mathematics and even memory are taken by some as skills of people who study and train for hours. On the other hand, we have a group of people with no brains bigger or smaller than ours, but different, who are capable of all these things," adds Snyder. /Telegraph/
