Scientists in the U.S. and Australia have discovered
a neurological cause for savant abilities. It appears that autistic savants,
endowed with supernormal mathematical, musical or artistic skills, all have
damage in a location in the left arterial temporal lobe; dementia patients
with damage in that particular area often also develop artistic talents, and
the Australian team managed to induce improvements in intuitive artistic and
mathematical abilities by magnetically turning off volunteers' temporal lobes.
It is speculated that the part of the brain in question somehow blocks
conscious access to low-level computations within the brain.