The Mystery of Sudden Genius

Diana de Avila was in her pool one day in 2017 when she was suddenly “dropped on the moon.” She had just gotten home from the hospital, where she had been treated for optic neuritis and vertigo, and she was trying to relax in the calm water. Suddenly, bright colors and shapes began to appear in front of her. Yellow took the form of a triangle; orange was shaped like a rectangle. She felt as if she could reach out and touch them. Most strongly, she felt a desire to create. “It felt like lightning,” de Avila says. “Like something turned on in a second. It was a mystery to me.”

She immediately began painting. She had no training in art. But her hands just knew what to do. “It was fulfilling to connect line and form. I let things be guided by intuition,” she says. Two hours later, the canvas was covered in splotches of teal, brown, and orange. She titled her first piece “Blobs and Boomerangs.”

Then the compulsion took over. She created five or six pieces a day, day after day. She’d get up in the middle of the night to make art. She played music, sometimes the same song on repeat, to quiet her manic mind. After a couple of months, she was exhausted. She did some research and found someone who might know what on earth was going on. “I wrote, ‘You don’t know me from Adam, but what’s happening to me?’”

***

De Avila was in the throes of an incredibly rare phenomenon—acquired savant syndrome. In these cases, an individual suddenly becomes a savant, demonstrating incredible talent in a specific domain—typically music, art, calendar calculating, mathematical and number skills, or mechanical or spatial skills, as well as astounding memory—for which there appears to be no precedent in their earlier life experience. It may materialize after injury, disease, stroke, dementia, or assault. Acquired savant syndrome is extremely rare: 32 cases were identified as of a 2015 report. Current estimates are slightly higher—and cases surely exist that haven’t been captured in the literature.

As few as 10 percent of savants have acquired savant syndrome, while the vast majority have congenital savant syndrome. To contextualize—congenital savant syndrome affects 10 percent of people with autism and less than 1 percent of people with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities. Fifty percent of people with savant syndrome have autism, while the rest generally have other developmental disorders. Male savants outnumber females by a ratio of six to one. The movie Rain Man, perhaps the most popular depiction of savant syndrome, tells the true story of Kim Peek, who could, among many other skills, read two pages of a book at the same time and memorize the material after a single read.

The coexistence of supreme talent with mental handicap in congenital savant syndrome is remarkable in its own right. But there’s something about acquired savant syndrome—the dichotomy of injury and growth, of tragedy and triumph—that boggles the mind.

***

One person fascinated by this phenomenon was Darold Treffert. As a newly minted psychiatrist in 1962, Treffert was tasked with beginning a children’s unit in Wisconsin’s Winnebago Mental Health Institute. He soon had 30 patients with severe mental challenges and disabilities. Yet four young boys stood out. One had memorized the entire Milwaukee bus system. One could glance at a 500-piece puzzle, picture side down, and seamlessly reconstruct it. One recited what happened on “this day in history” with encyclopedic memory. One made basketball free throws with machine-like precision and consistency.

“I was struck by these ‘Islands of Genius,’” wrote Treffert, “immersed and surrounded by a sea of otherwise permeating and severe mental handicap. How can that be?”

Treffert became the international authority on savant syndrome and corresponded with or met hundreds of savants throughout his life. The relationships he formed were transformative for many of them. Treffert died in 2020, having shaped the current understanding of savant syndrome.

***

No single theory can explain all cases of savant syndrome. But one leading hypothesis, especially for acquired savant syndrome, is that anomaly or damage in the left hemisphere essentially rewires the brain, recruiting new capacity or releasing dormant ability from the intact right hemisphere—much as a person with a broken leg relies more heavily on their opposing, functioning limb, thereby strengthening it.

The distinction between the two brain hemispheres is often oversimplified, but differences do exist: The left hemisphere specializes in logical, sequential, language-based processes, while the right specializes in creative and artistic processes. Acquired savant syndrome overwhelmingly involves left hemisphere damage and right hemisphere specialty skills. Injury, disease, or disability essentially “unlocks” the brain, leading a particular region to explode in functioning and flourishing. After a violent storm, lush, new vegetation blooms.

Research supports the role of hemispheric differences in savantism. Imaging research finds that for savants, some brain regions are bigger, concentrations of neurotransmitters higher, and connectivity stronger in the right hemisphere than in the left. “The electrical cabling is more robust,” says Neva Corrigan, a research scientist at the University of Washington. This aligns with research demonstrating that the right hemisphere uses more energy to generate more activity than the left, as measured by glucose and oxygen consumption. In acquired savant syndrome, “the left gets impaired, and the right gets freed up,” says Irem Onin of Istanbul Medipol University, co-author of a 2023 review article on savant syndrome.

Why are only some people with autism savants? Why do only some people with nervous system damage acquire savantism? The answer isn’t completely clear. It may involve individual neurological differences or where exactly the injury occurred. Biology may play a role, as greater testosterone in utero can alter left hemisphere development, which may explain why more men than women have autism and savantism. Genetics may play a role, as several genes have been implicated, and special abilities often appear in relatives of those with savant syndrome. But genetics alone aren’t enough to produce the phenomenon.

***

De Avila experienced a number of brain injuries over the years. As a preteen, she knew she wanted to serve in the military. The day she turned 18, she enlisted as military police. After only a few months in the service, she was in a motorcycle crash that damaged the left frontotemporal region of her brain.

Over her nine-month hospitalization, she prayed. She bargained with God. “I thought, ‘If you let me keep my legs, I’ll give my life to you,’” De Avila says. She made good on that promise; after being released from the hospital, she became a nun for seven years. In the convent, she dealt with multiple health challenges, in part due to chemical exposure from her time in the military. She left the convent and pursued a master’s in education, working for a brief time as a school psychologist, where she also taught herself how to code. Her medical challenges never fully dissipated, and she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2001.

Sixteen years later, de Avila was in the hospital with optic neuritis—inflammation of the optic nerve that leads to vision problems—for which she was given an extremely high dose of steroids. Some alchemical combination of traumatic brain injury from the motorcycle crash, deterioration from multiple sclerosis, and arousal from the steroids unleashed the creative fury she experienced in the pool days after her hospital stay.

In Treffert’s response to de Avila’s outreach, he called her story “compelling, and your artwork amazing.” He noted articles, books, and videos that could shed light on her situation and asked if she’d like to be in his registry of savants.

As the two corresponded, de Avila drew comfort from the doctor. He understood and encouraged her. She felt like an imposter when people asked her to teach them how to paint—she knew how, but never learned how. Treffert reassured her that others struggled with imposter syndrome too. She grew as an artist, and as a savant, learning to manage the compulsive element that came with her gift.

***

Derek Amato grew up in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. He hated school and loved sports. On October 27, 2006, he went to his friend Bill’s house for a barbecue. They had a few beers and were playing around the pool, diving, flipping, and tossing a Nerf football. When Rick threw the ball across the water, Amato hurtled down the deck and dove in to catch it. His head struck the pool bottom. He remembers seeing Bill and his friends speak wordlessly—he couldn’t hear them. Then he collapsed.

At the hospital, doctors didn’t find any bleeding in the brain and sent him home the next morning. He slept for five days, and then, somewhat miraculously, returned to his life. He soon visited a friend who had a few musical instruments in his apartment.

“I sat down at the keyboard and all of a sudden my hands were flying around,” Amato says. He loved music and had played drums as a kid, but nothing more. As he played now, he saw black and white squares in his mind that composed the piece, a kind of musical synesthesia. “My first thought was, ‘Rick put acid in my beer!’” Then his thoughts shifted to: What’s happening right now? Is this going to stay? Will it be gone tomorrow?

Amato took his mom to a music store to show her. “My mom is my best friend so I didn’t need to say anything,” Amato says. “She cried and asked, ‘What’s happening?’” I said, “I don’t know.”

Amato quickly found Treffert and reached out. Treffert again provided information and testing, but most of all, he provided friendship during a period of complete confusion. “He was like a father figure to us weird circus people. He was the ringleader of this beautiful circle of giftedness,” Amato says. Amato’s talents continued to blossom, as did his career. He played and performed around the country, mentored other artists, and spoke out about his journey.

***

No two savants are the same. Savants may be capable of reciting pi to more than 20,000 decimal places or accurately making spatial measurements across vast distances with pinpoint precision. All forms of savantism have a memory component, but some entail near-perfect memories for encyclopedic facts.

George Logothetis was born in London, the oldest of four boys, to Greek parents who ran a small shipping business. At age two and a half, in 1977, he contracted bacterial meningitis, fell into a coma, and spent two weeks in the hospital. Logothetis recovered fully, to the amazement of the doctors and nurses who had cared for him, but he would endure years of pain and illness related to his depleted immune system.

From a young age, Logothetis took an interest in his father’s work, devouring the weekly shipping newsletter and analyzing the market. He soon took the helm, becoming CEO by age 19. He remembers every number, every quantity, every measurement, every price that passed through his ledger. “The East Cape, a ship we delivered in 1993, was 482,000 cubic feet, built in 1975, and leased for $416,000 a month,” Logothetis says. “It doesn’t require effort to retrieve this. It’s just there.”

Logothetis achieved tremendous success in the world of shipping and far beyond. He grew his father’s company and co-founded Libra Group in 2003 to diversify his business. It’s now an operation that includes renewable energy, aerospace, maritime, hotels and hospitality, real estate, and diversified investments—yielding billions of dollars in assets.

An autodidact, Logothetis was curious to understand and deepen his own knowledge. He once asked the top speed reader to teach him how to do it. After their training session, Logothetis picked up a book—and he read about 1,000 words a minute (research suggests the average is about 238 words a minute for fiction and 175–300 for nonfiction). The speed reader was both shocked and skeptical. “Test me!” said Logothetis, who then successfully recalled the content of the material.

In 2013, Logothetis took a sabbatical to spend time diving into new interests, an adventure he embarks on every five years. That year, some psychological topics were on the docket. This led him to Dr. Treffert. On a call, Treffert explained the concept of acquired savant syndrome, sharing stories of people who, following an accident, could suddenly draw beautiful pictures or write incredible music. It was then that Logothetis learned there were documented cases of individuals acquiring skills and talents following neural catastrophe—including a bout of meningitis.

“This was mind-bending for me,” Logothetis says. “I felt emotional, relieved. It explained how I saw things that others didn’t see, but I didn’t have to make an effort to see them.”

It changed his relationships. Before that, he was filled with frustration when others couldn’t easily cite relevant numbers, prices, or information. He had no idea that other brains didn’t work the way his did, that data from past decades didn’t instantly materialize. “No one ever said to me, ‘George, it’s not normal to know this,’” Logothetis says. “I was so much more tolerant after speaking to Treffert. My attitude became, “If you don’t know the numbers, that’s fine. Just bring your file with you.”

Logothetis’s IQ was tested early and consistently by his parents, given their concerns about his cognitive health and recovery from meningitis. The score, says Logothetis, was 149—placing him in the 99.9th percentile of test-takers. Only 1 in 1,900 individuals score in this range. Logothetis’s exceedingly high cognitive ability no doubt contributes to his professional success. But his savant-like recall likely isn’t explained by high aptitude alone.

He was only two and a half when struck ill—would he have had these abilities in the absence of illness? There’s no definitive answer. But Treffert’s hunch, and unearthing how his mind operates differently from others, was the insight Logothetis needed. “I’m grateful to know,” Logothetis says. “Liberated to know.”

***

Treffert helped de Avila, Amato, Logothetis, and so many others. Toward the end of his life, he realized he needed to pass the baton to a successor. He found that man in psychiatrist Jeremy Chapman. The Treffert Center, located in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, provides mental health care, education, support groups, and other services to individuals with savant syndrome, autism, and other mental health conditions. Expanding this charter, Chapman opened Treffert Studios in February 2023.

The studio has purchased a vast array of creative tools—“musical instruments, cameras, paints and canvases, everything we can think of that would help somebody uncover, cultivate, and share a talent,” Chapman says. People can try as many outlets as possible. Let’s say a parent discovered their son was incredible at the piano because one day he walked to their living room and played it. But that family didn’t have a harp. Or a trombone. Is that child equally talented at other instruments or other skills? This studio, this incubator of talent, is just waiting for untapped genius. Like Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters in the movie X-Men, each “pupil” may discover their mutant superpower.

Chapman wants to help savants harness their talent for the joy of it but also so they can support themselves on a practical and financial level. Individuals with congenital savant syndrome have autism or other developmental challenges. Some can’t speak or live independently. But their talent poses a possibility. Can they set up an Etsy shop to sell their paintings? Can they record a music podcast and make some money?

“We have one man who is a blind piano prodigy. He didn’t learn to speak until 14 or 15, and he learned through song. He went to Berklee, and his goal is to be a piano player on a cruise ship,” Chapman says. “We can help him. We can start a TikTok account where he shares his skills. His mother is in her 70s, and when she passes, maybe he’ll have a little bit of autonomy.”

Another goal of the center is academic: How can savantism be defined and measured? There’s a certain amount of subjectivity involved in the construct. How many digits of pi do you have to memorize to be a savant? 500? 5,000? There are no clear criteria, no DSM diagnosis to turn to.

“We’re developing tests and questions to better objectify and stratify certain patterns,” Chapman says. For example, calendar calculations are a common savant skill. To assess this, Chapman’s team is developing a consistent standardized list of questions, such as: How many years into the past and future can you go? Are you using mathematical calculations, visual imagery, or another strategy? Does speed ever hamper your accuracy?

More esoteric savant skills involve sensory perception—parsing microscopic differences in color shades or volumetric weight. To assess the latter, the team devised a test with plastic cups full of water that differed by 25 milliliters, 10 milliliters, and 3 milliliters.

Chapman is excited about the future, as he believes more and more savants will pour in. “It didn’t used to be the case that anyone could hop on video and demonstrate how their child plays the violin,” Chapman says. “More individuals will be uncovered.”

***

How many more savants will materialize? Does everyone have latent talent waiting to be tapped? What if instead of injuring part of the brain you could temporarily inhibit it? Would that unleash your secret superpower? “The evidence seems to suggest we all have the potential. We may have dormant skills that are getting buried or obscured,” Chapman says.

Treffert argued that latent savant-like powers exist due to “genetic memory”—that the blueprint for some knowledge and capacities is passed down from parent to child through their DNA. This may take the form of mathematical templates or perfect pitch, for example. Everyone possesses some innate capacities, the theory goes, but they may quickly be lost due to disuse. Although some components of this theory are contentious, this is one explanation for how savants may possess skills they never learned.

Researchers have tried to stimulate such skills using neuromodulation, including repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), to temporarily inhibit a particular brain region and see how the rest of the brain responds. Much of this work has been conducted by Allan Snyder, a professor at the University of Sydney. In one study, magnetic pulses were directed to the left frontotemporal lobe of a small group of neurotypical individuals. This led some to change their drawing style and enhance their proofreading. In another study, using these pulses to inhibit the left anterior temporal lobe led 10 out of 12 participants to improve a numerical ability, the ability to accurately guess the number of items in a large collection. “I have argued that the extraordinary skills of savants are latent in us all and that they can be induced artificially,” Snyder writes in a paper published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. “My hypothesis is that savant skills are facilitated by privileged access to raw, less-processed sensory information, information that exists in all brains but is inaccessible owing to top-down inhibition.”

These implications are especially striking in the case of sudden savant syndrome—when no discernable disability or brain injury precedes the epiphany of genius. This is the rarest form of savant syndrome. In 2009, Treffert published a fascinating paper, documenting the known cases of sudden savant syndrome—just 11 people. A man in Israel walked by a piano in a mall, at 28 years old, and realized with a flash of clarity how to play with the skill of a virtuoso. A foreign journalist spent two years in Germany with a rudimentary grasp of the language. One day, at 31 years old, he was asked a question and perfect German effortlessly poured out of him. Not one of the 11 had experienced documented neurological turbulence on their way to brilliance.

***

De Avila continued to correspond with Treffert over the years, up until a month before his death. She created a picture of the “savant whisperer,” which now hangs in the Treffert Library. “I owe so much to him. His guidance, his kindness. Getting me off the ledge of craziness,” de Avila says.

Today, de Avila’s art explores digital media. “I do a lot of fractal work. I think of code and algorithms as my palette,” she says. She is a full-time artist and exhibits her work in a gallery in downtown Sarasota, Florida, where she lives—something she never could have imagined before. She began an acquired savant artist collective that flourished, although she’s since stepped back due to her health.

Her health is a challenge, one that has levied tremendous pain and tremendous talent. “One is lemonade and one is lemons,” de Avila says. “It’s in my nature to make lemonade out of lemons. I see it as a wonderful distraction from the hard parts of life, from brain injury, MS, and other things. Art is the healing thing.”

This paradox is inherent in each and every case of acquired savant syndrome. What first sparked Onin’s interest in savantism was a 19-year-old rehabilitation patient who got into a terrible car accident and was in a coma for three weeks. Upon waking, he was devastated and fell into a depression. But he also developed the ability to conduct complex calculations. When he realized that he had newfound mathematical skills—that some ability, however bounded, was improving rather than declining—he started investing more in his rehabilitation, getting better and better each week.

Is the experience of acquiring savant-like abilities a gift or a medical burden? The degree to which the two push, pull, and vie for dominance is different for each person and can shape their identity and trajectory. “It’s up to your philosophy, your social environment,” Onin says. “If people who acquire savant syndrome can turn it to their advantage, it’s a gift.”

“I know that my brain is atrophying. As my art is getting better, I’m losing more of my brain,” de Avila says. “It feels like an inverse relationship. Is it a bad thing? I don’t feel that I can change it. I’ll take it—and keep creating.”

Submit your response to this story to letters@psychologytoday.com.

Pick up a copy of Psychology Today on newsstands now or subscribe to read the rest of this issue.