@the_great_she_elephant wrote:
Kim Peek, the real Rain Man whose almost unimaginable powers of memory were coupled with severe disabilities and who inspired the Oscar-winning film role played by Dustin Hoffman has died of a heart attack in his home town of Salt Lake City, aged 58.
Peek has been called a "mega-savant" for his ability to memorise to the word up to 12,000 books, including the Bible and the Book of Mormon. He could read two pages in about 10 seconds – the right page with his right eye and the left simultaneously with his left eye.
He knew phone books by heart, and could tell you what day of the week a particular date fell upon going back decades. One of his party tricks was to tell strangers the names of the people who used to live next door to them years ago.
At the same time, though, he had deep disabilities and relied on his father Fran for help dressing, brushing his hair and other simple motor skills.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/dec/22/kim-peek-rain-man-dies
That's a really awesome article
This part was cool
Peek was initially diagnosed as having autism, but in recent years that view has been overturned.
Scientists remained intrigued by signs that over the years he seemed to acquire greater cognitive skills to interpret facts – something assumed to be lacking in savants.
He had begun to play the piano, and had developed something of a sense of humour. Before Rain Man he had shunned company and was incapable of looking people in the eye, but the film seemed to boost his confidence and social skills.
"He moved from holding this gigantic database of fact in his head to being able to join facts together," Treffert said. "He became a living Google."
the bits about the Cerebellum too, a cerebellum disorder would account for coordination problems and not learning to walk up steps for so long - the two diagnosis can and do exist seperately, you can have a CDD without having ASD
I wonder if he ever had an IQ test? Cos someone on the lower end of the autism scale has an IQ of 70 or less. That's when kids in Australia get put into specific autism SEU's as opposed to ASD SEU's. It's when that IQ is measured above 70 that they start looking at diagnosis' of Aspergers and then high functioning autism.
Some people can go their whole lives and never really live for a single minute.
