A little savant in every one of us....

   It has been said that there is a little savant in every one of us. This struck me as a particularly encouraging statement. It hit a chord because I have always felt a little special - a little odd. I am creative, optimistic, energetic, even a little manic.... definitely not suited to quiet tasks. My accomplishments come in big bursts. I have never stayed with one thing long enough to be exceptionally good at any one thing. I am scattered all over the map. I am proficient at so many things, but master of no one thing. At least I am always happy and pleasant.
  So I listened intently when a Science Journalist named Joshua Foer told about how he went from a man with "average" abilities to winning the U.S. Memory Championship! He spent one year trying to train his memory, and also trying to understand its inner-workings, its natural deficiencies, and its hidden potential. He said he ended up learning some secrets to memorization, and also learning the best way to become highly intelligent. For him it all came down to practicing using memory and using different visualization tricks to imprint memories in his mind. Still, this required practice, and practice required focus and repetition of minutia....this seemed unencouraging to me. And when I sat down and tried to work on the mnemonics puzzles that were required I literally wanted to jump out of my seat.
   Another theory proposed by Darold Treffert theorizes that everyone has some savant talents "localized in lower regions under the cerebral cortex, but they are repressed by the  "higher" processes." He calls this the "small Rainman" that we all have in our brain. Some people with dementia develop savant-like characteristics. The explosion of creativity in these patients is accompanied by a loss of language and social skills, but causes improvements in mathematics and calendar calculation processes! Obviously that is not the kind of solution I am seeking.
   As I read further into Treffert's work I finally found the savant in ME! Treffert said "savants have privileged access to lower-level, less-processed information, before it is packaged into holistic concepts and meaningful labels. Due to a failure in top-down ihibition, they can tap into information that exists in all of our brains, but that is normally beyond conscious awareness... Savant skills can emerge without training, and they're not qualitatively improved by practice. In fact, savants generally don't have insight into how they perform their skill." THIS must be me!... I function the best on impulse with a highly creative spark!
   In life it is important to truly understand one's strengths and weaknesses and improve those weaknesses. I will keep reading about memory and how the mind works!