The academy-award-winning film Rain Man brought national — indeed, international — attention to the Savant Syndrome condition. But since it was first described a century ago, the phenomenon of the savant — the juxtapositions of severe mental handicap and prodigious mental ability — has remained unexplained.


Darold A. Treffert, MD, past-president of the Wisconsin Medical Society and psychiatrist at St. Agnes Hospital in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, has studied the syndrome for years. He is the author of the book, Extraordinary People: Understanding the Savant Syndrome, which chronicles case studies of Savant Syndrome patients. He also was a consultant to the movie Rain Man. On this web site he describes the condition, reviews and summarizes the world literature on this topic since the early reports, describes more recent cases, and catalogs and categorizes savant abilities. He also provides a bibliography for references, and profiles of savant syndrome patients.

Extraordinary People: Understanding Savant Syndrome by Dr. Treffert has now been re-issued, with an epilogue update, by iuniverse.com through an arrangement with Author's Guild backinprint.com. The book is available through the www.iuniverse.com web site, Barnes and Noble.com at www.bn.com, and amazon.com.

This site explores this fascinating condition, and some particular savants, in some depth. For more information, please contact: Darold A. Treffert, MD St. Agnes Hospital, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry University of Wisconsin Medical School, Madison 430 East Division Street Fond du Lac, WI 54935 920-926-4297 office 920-921-9381 home office 920-926-8933 fax Personal Web site: http://www.daroldtreffert.com e-mail: savants@charter.net

Savants in Scientific American

Inside the Mind of a Savant The December 2005 issue of Scientific American has a feature article — "Inside the Mind of a Savant" — about Kim Peek and his remarkable memory capacity and skills. The article, by Drs. Darold Treffert and Dan Christensen, documents some of Kim Peek's incredible memory-related abilities contrasted with imaging findings that include, for example, an absent corpus callosum.

An article on Savant Syndrome is in the June 2002 of Scientific American, available for purchase on-line at this link. The article is authored by Darold A. Treffert and Gregory L. Wallace, and is filled with stunning photos by Ethan Hill, such as this one of Kim Peek — 'the real Rain Man.'

The "Island of Genius" article was re-printed as the lead article in the introductory special edition of Scientific American MIND, December 2003, which can be read on-line by clicking here.