Source: Medical News Today
It has been proposed by many brain researchers that inducing a kind of temporary Autism can result in increased cognitive function. I even read not long ago that someone was trying to develop a type of smart drug that renders the user autistic for a time. The idea is that the savant-like abilities that some autistic people display is actually present in all of us; Autism unlocks a part of the brain that is usually suppressed.
Professor Allan Snyder - director of the Centre for the Mind at the University of Sydney, Australia - is conducting research into this and attempting to provoke the 'savant syndrome' in participants. He has had some success in using "...low frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to turn off that part of the brain which controls all our inbuilt expectations". To do this, he directs magnetic pulses over the left anterior temporal lobe for 15 minutes.
See the full article for details, but Snyder seems to be saying that parts of the brain that are usually inhibited are activated in savant brains. It's all very interesting, particularly the implications that savants have a greater capacity for direct experience:
Savants have access to the less processed information, before it is packaged into holistic concepts and labels. Autistic savants tend to see a more literal, less filtered view of the world.
Sounds very much like a non-dual way of being. I can't wait to be Rain Man for a day.
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