向左自闭，向右天才

对于那些曾经想要获得艺术技能但是没有对此投入太多精力的人来说，这是个好消息。有可能(虽然不太可能)突然某一天你会发现自己莫名其妙地被钢琴所吸引，当你的手指在琴键上舞动，你发现自己居然是无师自通的钢琴大师。

Or you might sit down one day with a pencil and draw a photorealistic picture of your dog, though you once couldn't draw a dog if your life depended on it. Just don't get your hopes up. Researchers are learning that every so often it does happen, and it's called sudden savant syndrome.

或者你可以坐在画布前，用笔画出照片般逼真的画作。只是不要抱有太大希望。相关研究人员正在研究发生这种现象的具体情况，并且它被称为间歇学者综合征。

Autistic Savants

自闭天才

First, let's back up a bit. Savant syndrome is a condition that shows up in about 10 percent of people that fall on the autism spectrum. Dustin Hoffman won best actor at the 1989 Oscars for his portrayal of an autistic savant in the film "Rain Man." Congenital savants — those whose abilities show up in early childhood — often have some deep, impressive, but ultimately very narrow cognitive talents that are almost always associated with autism.

首先，让我们后退一点。SavANT综合征是大约10%的自闭症患者中出现的一种症状。达斯汀·霍夫曼凭借在电影《雨人》中对自闭症学者的刻画赢得了1989年奥斯卡最佳男主角。那些先天学者——那些能力在童年早期就显现的先天学者——通常有一些深刻的、令人印象深刻的、但最终非常狭隘的认知天赋，几乎总是让人联想到。患有自闭症的ED。

Congenital savants might be profoundly disabled in one aspect of their cognitive functioning, but they often have extraordinary abilities in another. Savantism sometimes shows up in the form of an ability to perform complex mental math or astounding feats of memorization. For example, some savants can almost instantaneously calculate that Feb. 27, 1913, fell on a Thursday, and others might be able to memorize every license plate number they encounter on a car trip between San Diego and Seattle.

有些学者可能在其认知功能的一个方面严重残疾，但他们却在另一个方面具有非凡的能力。这有时会以复杂心算或令人惊叹的记忆功能的形式表现出来。例如，一些学者几乎可以立即计算出1913年2月27日是星期四，有些人能记住他们在一次旅途中遇到的每个车牌号码。

Other savants might have exceptional skills in music or art. For example, Nadia Chomyn, a child from the U.K. who was profoundly autistic (she died in 2015 at the age of 48), started producing photographically realistic drawings of horses and people riding them when she was just 3. Without ever being taught, she instinctively knew everything about drawing: linear perspective, foreshortening and proportion, despite having limited to no social or communicative skills. Strangely, Chomyn lost her ability to draw when her communication improved at age 9.

其他人可能拥有音乐或艺术方面的杰出技能。例如，来自英国的孩子Nadia Chomyn，她患有自闭症(她于2015年去世，享年48岁)，在她3岁时，她开始画画，画里有马以及骑马的人，非常逼真。她无师自通地了解关于绘画的一切：线性透视，透视和比例，但是她完全不会交际。奇怪的是，9岁时她的沟通能力得到改善，但与此同时也失去了画画的能力。

Acquired Savants

后天天才

Although congenital savants like Chomyn have been recognized throughout history — until the 1970s, they were called "idiot savants" — other types have been identified in the past couple of decades. People who've suffered from head injuries, strokes or other central nervous system (CNS) damage can occasionally develop abilities consistent with those seen in autistic savants.

像 Chomyn 这样的天才已得到人们的认可 - 20 世纪 70 年代之前，他们被称为“白痴学者” - 在过去的几十年中，也发现了别种天才。头部受伤，中风或其他中枢神经系统(CNS)损伤的人偶尔会发展出与自闭症患者一致的能力。

Dr. Darold Treffert, the founder of The Treffert Center in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, and author of "Islands of Genius: The Bountiful Mind of the Autistic, Acquired and Sudden Savant," has been studying savant syndrome for 57 years. He even worked as a consultant on the movie "Rain Man."

Darold Treffert 博士是威斯康星州 Treffert 中心的创始人，也是“天才岛：《自闭症，获得性和突发性学者的丰富思想》的作者，57年来，他一直在研究相关症状。他甚至还担任电影《雨人》的顾问。

Until about 15 years ago, Treffert worked under the assumption, as everyone in his field did, that savantism always was a symptom that showed up in conjunction with autism. But patients with brain injury or disease began appearing in his office with special abilities much like those of his patients with autism. This acquired savant phenomenon seems to be much less common — only one in 2,000 people with brain injuries develop these types of special abilities or interests, whereas one in 20 autistic patients exhibit it.

大约15年前， Treffert 博士提出这个假设。正如他所在领域的每个人所做的那样，专业总是伴随着自闭症。患有脑损伤或疾病的患者开始出现在他的办公室，他们与患有自闭症的患者一样，非常精通某些领域。这种获得性的学术现象似乎不太常见 - 平均2000名脑损伤患者中只有一人发展出特殊能力或兴趣，而20名自闭症患者中平均只有一人表现出这种特殊能力或兴趣。

However, since the scope of injuries that could be associated with savantism is pretty huge, acquired savantism accounts for about half the known cases, while autism accounts for the other half.

然而，由于相关损伤很多，所以获得性专业天才占已知病例的一半左右，而孤独症占另一半。