14 DAY TRIAL // After hitting her head in a skiing accident, a woman witnessed her mental abilities drastically changing over the course of just a few weeks. Thus, she woke up one day and found that she could remember any place she had ever visited in incredible detail.
Besides, the woman discovered that she could create outstandingly accurate diagrams of these places. Having examined her, a team of neurologists eventually diagnosed her with a rare condition known to medical experts as acquire savant syndrome.
What this peculiar medical condition entails
So far, about 50 cases of acquired savant syndrome have been documented across the globe. So, yes, neurologists weren't exaggerating when they told this woman that her condition was very rare.
Instances of acquired savant syndrome correlate with brain disease or injury. Specialists are still a bit fuzzy on what exactly causes the condition, but they do know that it has something to do with rearranging pathways between neurons in such ways that amazing mental abilities are unlocked.
“Acquired savant syndrome are instances in which dormant savant skills emerge, sometimes at a prodigious level, after a brain injury or disease in previously non-disabled persons where few such skills were evident before such CNS [central nervous system] injury or disease.”
“This circumstance, of course, raises the question of whether such dormant capacity exists in everyone, only to surface, perhaps as a backup system, when there is such CNS [central nervous system] injury or illness,” explain researchers with the Wisconsin Medical Society.
Developing acquired savant syndrome is odd experience
In an essay she wrote for xoJane, an American online magazine, the anonymous woman details how, not long after falling and hitting her head while skiing with her family, she started feeling her memory, her perception and even her vision changing.
At first, she tried to ignore these symptoms. One day, however, she got a terrible migraine and was left with no choice but to seek medical help. Talking to the doctors handling her case, she told them that her memory was working too well and this was worrying her.
Fast forward about a year and hundreds of medical tests aimed at documenting her newly gained set of mental abilities, and the woman was diagnosed with acquired savant syndrome. Interestingly, it's just building layouts that she can remember with stunning accuracy.
Prior to her accident and to her being diagnosed with this rare medical condition, the woman had no interest in architecture and almost never drew anything. However, she's now considering putting her new brain power to good use studying drafting and design.