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Why is the eccentric, selfish, not too tactful and polite hero of The Big Bang Theory so popular with everyone? Perhaps people are attracted to his genius, which partly compensates for many shortcomings, says biology professor Bill Sullivan. What if there is an equally bright talent hidden in each of us?
This spring ended the last, twelfth season of the world-famous Big Bang Theory. And, which is atypical for a series about scientists, a spin-off has already been released, with the same humor telling about the childhood of one of the most charismatic heroes — Sheldon Cooper.
Sheldon won the hearts of the audience, being completely different from the standard attractive movie characters. He is not compassionate. Doesn’t do feats. He is impatient and not ready to understand others. This is a brutally honest egoist whose empathy is harder to detect than the Higgs boson. Sheldon’s heart seems as still as the elevator in the building where he lives. He infuriates and irritates. He’s also incredibly bright and talented.
The humble charm of talent
Why do many viewers around the world find Sheldon attractive? “Because we are crazy about geniuses,” says biologist and publicist Bill Sullivan. “Brilliant talent is what Nobel laureate Dr. Cooper has in abundance.”
Sheldon’s amazing analytical abilities and intellect are high precisely due to the underdevelopment of emotional intelligence. Throughout the seasons, viewers do not lose hope that the hero will find a balance between reason and the ability to feel. In several of the show’s most poignant scenes, we watch with bated breath as Cooper transcends cold logic and is suddenly illumined by an understanding of other people’s emotions.
In real life, similar trade-offs between cognitive and emotional skills are common in savants. This is how people with congenital or acquired (for example, as a result of trauma) mental disorders and the so-called «island of genius» are called. It can manifest itself in phenomenal abilities for arithmetic or music, fine arts, cartography.
Bill Sullivan proposes to explore this area together, to understand the nature of genius and to determine whether each of us is endowed with phenomenal mental abilities.
Hidden genius in the depths of the brain
In 1988, Dustin Hoffman played the title role in Rain Man, playing a brilliant savant. The prototype of his character, Kim Peak, nicknamed «KIMputer», was born without a corpus callosum — a plexus of nerve fibers that connects the right and left hemispheres. Peak could not master many motor skills properly, was not able to dress himself or brush his teeth, and he also had a low IQ. But, with a truly encyclopedic knowledge, he would instantly beat us all in “What? Where? When?».
Peak had a phenomenal photographic memory: he memorized almost all books, and he read at least 12 thousand of them in his life, and could repeat the lyrics of a song he heard only once. In the head of this man-navigator were stored maps of all major cities in the United States.
The amazing talents of savants can be varied. Blind from birth, Ellen Boudreau, a woman with autism, can play a piece of music flawlessly after just one listen. Autistic savant Stephen Wiltshire draws any landscape from memory exactly after looking at it for a few seconds, earning him the nickname «Live Camera».
You have to pay for superpowers
We may envy these superpowers, but they usually come at a very high price. One area of the brain cannot develop without drawing important resources from others. Many savants experience significant difficulties with social connections, differ in features close to autistic. Some have brain damage so severe that they cannot walk or take basic care of themselves.
Another example is savant Daniel Tammlet, a high-functioning autistic who acts and looks like a normal guy until he starts saying pi up to 22 decimal places from memory or speaks one of the 514 languages he knows. Other «living calculators», such as the German mathematician «wizard» Rutgett Gamm, do not appear to be savants with brain anomalies at all. The gift of Gamma is most likely determined by genetic mutations.
Even more surprising are the people who didn’t stand out for their entire lives until they emerged as savants after a head injury. Scientists know about 30 such cases when the most ordinary person suddenly receives an unusual talent after a concussion, stroke or lightning strike. Their new gift may be photographic memory, musical, mathematical or even artistic abilities.
Is it possible to become a genius?
All these stories make you wonder what hidden talent lies in the brain of each of us. What happens if he is released? Will we rap like Kanye West, or will we get the plasticity of Michael Jackson? Will we become the new Lobachevskys in mathematics, or will we become famous in art, like Salvador Dali?
Also interesting is the surprising relationship between the emergence of artistic abilities and the development of some forms of dementia — in particular, Alzheimer’s disease. Having a devastating effect on the cognitive functionality of a higher order, neurodegenerative disease sometimes gives rise to an extraordinary talent in painting and graphics.
Another parallel between the emergence of a new artistic gift in people with Alzheimer’s disease and savants is that the manifestations of their talent are combined with the weakening or loss of social and speech skills. Observations of such cases led scientists to the conclusion that the destruction of areas of the brain associated with analytical thinking and speech releases latent creative abilities.
We are still far from understanding whether there really is a little Rain Man in each of us and how to free him.
Neuroscientist Allan Schneider of the University of Sydney is working on a non-invasive method to temporarily «silence» certain parts of the brain using directed electrical current through electrodes placed on the head. After he weakened the participants in the experiment, the activity of the same areas that are destroyed in Alzheimer’s disease, people showed much better results in solving tasks for creative and non-standard thinking.
“We are still far from understanding whether there really is a little Rain Man in each of us and how to free him from captivity,” Sullivan concludes. “But given the exorbitant price to pay for these extraordinary abilities, I wouldn’t dream of becoming a savant right now.”
About the Author: Bill Sullivan is professor of biology and bestselling author of Nice to Know Yourself! Genes, microbes, and the amazing powers that make us who we are.”