It proves we all are unique
Where there is a will there is a way
Born in St. Louis to Mary vos Savant and Joseph Mach, Marilyn opposes the tradition of children taking their father's surname, instead using her mother's maiden name. She attended Washington University, but dropped out to pursue a career in writing and investing.
Marilyn's listing in the 1986 Guinness Book of World Records brought her widespread media attention. Among the periodicals profiling her was Parade, which followed its article with a selection of questions and her answers to them, the popularity of which launched a regular question-and-answer column, Ask Marilyn. In the column she solves mathematical and logical puzzles and answers questions on a wide range of subjects, including philosophy, physics, politics, education, and human nature, as well as responding to more traditional requests for self-help advice. The column has also provided a basis for many of her books.
Marilyn lives in New York City with her husband, artificial-heart pioneer Robert Jarvik. She is the Chief Financial Officer of Jarvik Hear
Savant skills occur within a narrow but constant range of human mental functions, generally in six areas: calendar calculating; lightening calculating & mathematical ability; art (drawing or sculpting); music (usually piano with perfect pitch); mechanical abilities; and spatial skills. In some instances unusual language abilities have been reported but those are rare. Other skills much less frequently reported include map memorizing, visual measurement, extrasensory perception, unusual sensory discrimination such as enhanced sense of touch & smell, and perfect appreciation passing time without knowledge of a clock face. The most common savant skill is musical ability. A regularly re-occurring triad of musical genius, blindness and autism is particularly striking in the world literature on this topic. Premature birth history is commonly reported in persons with Savant Syndrome.
In some cases of Savant Syndrome a single special skill exists; in others there are several skills co-existing simultaneously. The skills tend to be right hemisphere in type — nonsymbolic, artistic, concrete, directly perceived — in contrast to left hemisphere type that tend to be more sequential, logical, and symbolic including language specialization.
Whatever the special skills, they are always linked with phenomenal memory. That memory, however, is a special type — very narrow but exceedingly deep--within its narrow confines. Such memory is a type of "unconscious reckoning" — habit or procedural memory — which relies on more primitive circuitry (cortico-striatal)
than higher level (cortico-limbic) cognitive or associative memory used more commonly and regularly in normal persons.
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