Savant syndrome (formerly called idiot savant syndrome) refers to an exceedingly rare but remarkable condition in which persons with severe mental handicaps have some isolated but spectacular islands of genius or brilliance that stand in stark, incongruous contrast with the serious limitations of the overall handicaps. The mental handicap can be either autism or mental retardation. The skills, remarkable as they are, exist within a very narrow range of human abilities. They include music (usually piano); art (drawing or sculpting); calendar calculating (the ability to give the day of the week for any past or future date); lightning calculating (the ability to add, multiply, subtract, or divide complex numbers with lightning rapidity); and mechanical or spatial skills including map memorizing, visual measurement, unusual sensory discrimination such as enchanced sense of touch and smell, or perfect appreciation of time without knowledge of a clock. These skills, within...