Kim Peek, aka Rain Man Focus of NASA Study

Bob Vila's Hammer writes "Kim Peek - an autistic man who has been deemed a "mega-savant" for his astonishing knowledge of 15 grand subjects ranging from history and literature, geography and numbers, to sports, music and dates - is a part of a new NASA study to explore the changes in his brain since MRI images were originally taken in 1988. Not only was he the basis of the main character in the movie Rain Man, but he apparently is getting smarter in his specialty areas as he gets older. The study has scientists hoping that technology used to study the effects of space travel on the brain will help explain his mental capabilities."

Comments

The article missed something.

[grub]

But he also is severely limited in other ways, like not being able to find the silverware drawer at home or dressing himself.

What's his /. UID?

Re:The article missed something.

[roman_mir]

98. Definitely 98.

Kim Peek not "autistic"

[daveschroeder]

While definitely a "savant", Kim Peek is not behaviorally autistic; Rain Man's character was modified to be an autistic savant. (Autism, like many disorders, is merely a set of diagnostic criteria, and Kim may share some in common with classic autism. However, some critical benchmarks for autism are not shared, making Kim not strictly "autistic".)

The above article and the brief wikipedia story are very interesting reads. For example, did you know that Kim was born with "an enlarged head and missing corpus callosum, the connecting tissue between the brain hemispheres, damage to the cerebellum and no anterior commissure"?

Re:Kim Peek not "autistic"

[Feynman]

[D]id you know that Kim was born "missing...the connecting tissue between the brain hemispheres...?"

According to this artice, "tests showed his brain hemispheres are not separated, forming a single, large 'data storage' area" (emphasis added).

Re:Kim Peek not "autistic"

[sl3xd]

While definitely a "savant", Kim Peek is not behaviorally autistic; Rain Man's character was modified to be an autistic savant.

This is true, but it's worth noting that the movie was based around Kim Peek. I've actually met Kim Peek (and his father, Kim didn't live by himself at the time), he's quite a fellow. Apparently Kim was having trouble getting medical care due to both insurance indifference and government beaurocracy, and Dustin Hoffman (who played the savant in the movie) moved mountains to help out Kim. I've also met people with classic autism -- while a psycologist may differ on the strictness of the definition, to the layman it's the same thing. Still, the opprotunity for education is appreciated.

It's still neat to ask Kim about a little blink-by-town in the middle of nowhere, and he's able to tell you about the area with enough detail that it seems as if he's been there before. (He liked to study maps at one point in time, and no matter how long ago it was, he still remembers perfectly). As long as we stayed in the guidelines set by his father (mainly talking about Kim's areas of interest -- and hence knowledge), he played a perfect game of 'stump the dummy.' (The term originates from one of my engineering professors, referring to Q&A sessions where students ask him questions about their homework, and has nothing to do with Kim Peek. Half the fun of the game was getting the professor to say "I don't know". When talking to Kim Peeks, this never happened.)

It'll be interesting ot see what the study finds.

Re:Kim Peek not "autistic"

[relaxrelax]

The massive lack of metallothionein in autism (one of the metal detox pathways) does mean higher levels of metals and therefore heavy metal poisoning in 99% of cases; but however you can't claim autism is the same as heavy metal poisoning!!!

For starters, metal poisoning does NOT always imply lack of metallothionein or autistic behavior, and only mercury poisoning would somewhat approach autism symptoms... superficially!

Also autism does not always mean metal poisoning. Some autistics have simply not been exposed to enough metals to be poisonned and they're quite autistic - the poison dart frog active substance in their blood and all that without metal poisoning. Autistics with the least metal poisoning have a tendency NOT to be deficient in sulfur like 75% of autistics (in a study by Dr. Waring). Sulfur deficiency is a marker of mercury poisoning, as mercury has affinity for most sulfur groups in the body and therefore damages sulfur metabolism.

The MMR vaccine is the only vaccine to have a serious connection to autism, but it's like 0.04% of cases and not 99% as Wakefield believed at some point... and it's a delayed effect. Other vaccines don't CAUSE autism, but could certainly account for chance of early diagnosis because of plainly obvious mercury damage and ADD/dyslexia type problems.

Difference between autistic children of today with the next generation of children that are now on non-mercury (but aluminium preservative) vaccines is gonna be quite instructive, look for it when it shows up...

The mercury poisoning (quite a common disease among autistics with mercury fillings) is but one of the issues (lead and arsenic kills people too, you know). You CAN'T de-autistify someone with chelation, but curing metal poisoning can raise their IQ just like in non-autistic who are lead poisonned. Then they don't SEEM autistic as much, but still function extremely differently from other people when you look at the details.

In short, high IQ allows autistics to "pretent to be normal" by learning normal behavior and acting it with good actor skills. You can find all about it in a book called "pretending to be normal".

By the way, here is another savant (with autistic traits, but possibly not completely autistic). This one is a top 10 mathematician in history according to many.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erdos

Some autistic links: neurodiversity.com

I recommend the neurodiversity.com section called "murder of autistics" for a good, true, opinion-diverse, very disturbing read.

conspiracy theory 26

[Tablizer]

Maybe NASA is too lazy to count stars in Hubble images for density studies, and hope this dude can do it in one shot.

Put this dude on Jeopardy!!!

[sssmashy]

Maybe he could give Ken a run for his money. Also, I'd love to see some "rain man" style banter with Alex as an alternative to the usual tepid small talk.

Re:Goal

[Timesprout]

Dude, there is no spoon.

Re:They're both Mormon

[Jon Abbott]

As another interesting side note, Ken Jennings answered a question (or is that questioned an answer) about Rain Man just a few shows ago... After answering he said "definitely, definitely."

Geography vs. Spoon location

[cmstremi]

Interesting that he can describe driving directions and specific geography but can't apply the same skills to locating the silverware - they seem like very similar tasks.

Peek on tour

[DevilPen]

Kim Peek and his father visited my college (Elizabethtown College) several years ago. It was basically the two of them on stage describing Kim's condition. That was followed up by some interesting personal stories from Kim's life... including their involvement in the "Rain Man" film experience.

The most interesting part of the session was the question and answer portion at the end. For about 30 - 45 minutes Kim fielded various "trivia" questions from the audience. They ranged from obscure baseball facts from 50 years ago, to a student standing up, stating his name and hometown and asking for his address and phone number. No-one succeeded in stumping Peek.

Peek's visit was certainly one of two most interesting speakers to visit my college while I was there. (the other would be Desmond Tutu)