IS GENIUS WITHIN YOU?

     Google terms like "gifted" and "head trauma" and you will find intriguing results, and just maybe something really unusual about yourself! You may find there is possible genius within you without you knowing!                   Science, according to Adam Piore in an article titled "The Genius Within" in Popular Science Magazine (March 2013), is looking for a way for everyone to tap into their individual "savant-ism". It has turned out that brain damage has unleashed extraordinary talents in a small group of otherwise ordinary individuals. That, of course, is a hard way to discover the genius within you, but  imagine if science could do that for everyone without the trauma side effect!
     Actor Dustin Hoffman introduced a savant named Kim Peek in the blockbuster film "Rain Man". Peek could read two pages of a book at the same time, one with each eye, committing both to memory. He had instant recall from some 12,000 books. (He died in 2009.)
     Look what some of these 30 or so known savants (people with a remarkable talent, even though ordinary, or less, in other aspects) have done, as reported by Piore.
     Back in the 19th century "Blind Tom" Bethune, a former slave, was able to reproduce any song on the piano. He played at the White House at age 11, did a world tour at 16 and earned a fortune at that time, $750,000.
     A high school dropout named Jason Padgett, brutally beaten by muggers, is the only known person in the world able to draw complex geometric patterns called fractuals. He also claims to have discovered a mistake in pi, which could upset a long-standing mathematical "fact".
     Tony Cicoria, an orthopedic surgeon in New York was struck by lightning while in a telephone booth. He then was able to learn to compose music and play the piano, something he had never been interested in before.
     A stroke transformed a mild-mannered chiropractor named Jon Sarkin into a celebrated artist whose work has appeared in "The New Yorker" with works in galleries selling for thousands of dollars.
     Stephen Wiltshire, who is autistic, drew buildings at age 8. As an adult in 2005 he flew over the Thames River for 15 minutes, then sketched seven square miles of London's streets, rivers and buildings, precise to the windows.
     Leslie Lemke, blind since birth, at age 14 played a Tchaikovsky piano concerto after hearing it in a movie theater. He has performed since around the world, being able to reproduce thousands of songs from memory.
     After recovering from a bad auto accident at age 14, Jim Carollo made a perfect score on a mastery of geometry test without having studied, and later passed calculus exams without ever taking trigonometry.
     Daniel Tammet can master a new language in one week and do lightning-quick mathematical calculations.
     Identical autistic savant twins Flo and Kay Lyman can name the day of the week for any date in the future or past. For any date in the past they can recall what they did, what they wore, what they ate and what the weather was like.
     Allan Snyder, a neuroscientist at the University of Sydney in Australia, has studied brain functions of people with savant syndrome since 1999. He thinks such untapped potential lies within all of us, just awaiting accessibility with the right tools. We cannot readily access these abilities "because they are not conscious to us," he thinks.