Genius Autism : Savant Syndrome

우영우, the protagonist of the drama “이상한 변호사 우영우”, suffers from autism but has a genius ability in memory. We call the situation like 우영우, “Savant Syndrome”. Savant Syndrome is a phenomenon that person with autism or intellectual disabilities has outstanding ability in mental arithmetic, memory, music, puzzle-solving, etc. Savant Syndrome is especially linked to autism and according to the survey, more than 50% of people suffering from this syndrome have autism.

So, what is the cause of Savant syndrome? To tell the conclusion first, the cause of this syndrome is not known exactly because there are only a few people who have this syndrome, so there are many difficulties to study about it. Psychologists have expressed many opinions to find out the reason. One of the most likely opinions is about left and right brains. Generally, the left brain of the fetus grows later than the right brain. During the growth of left brain, sometimes the left brian get damaged. Due to damage of the left brian, the right brain gets incredible function, and the Savant Syndrome gets started. 

Known as the symptoms of Savant syndrome are similar to those of autism, such as inability to empathize and communicate with others, lack of social skills such as not getting along well with people, and repeating the same activity all the time. The special difference with autism is that Servant syndrome is characterized by genius and excellent memory in one area: math, mental arithmetic, memorization, art, and music.

Then, No one actually has Savant Syndrome? Only a few people in the world have it, there are some real cases. First of all, "Cody Lee," who appeared in a KBS documentary, has autism and developmental disabilities, but he has a musical genius to play any song when he listened to it for once or twice, despite having never learned to play the piano. A similar case goes for the Malaysian boy, "Ping Leanne." He is an autistic boy with an emotional disability, but without a master of art, he creates masterful works of art with remarkable colors.