The Last Frontier

The brain is a fascinating thing. I have always been amazed and intrigued by the mysteries that it harbors.

Some people's brains are terribly injured and cannot carry out the day to day tasks that most of us take for granted. But they can play any piece of music after hearing it only once. Or they can do mathematical equations of startling complexity in the blink of an eye. Or they can tell you upon what day of the week any given day in history fell.

Sometimes, people lose half their brain to injury or disease. And yet they live, and even regain some of the function for which the missing half was responsible.

Some people can do things with their brain that truly astound, but which also evoke profound skepticism. ESP has been a hotly debated subject for years. And yet who has not experienced a certain "feeling" now and again? A child in trouble. A loved one ill. Or just an inexplicable portent of doom?

Who has not, on occasion, correctly identified the caller on the other end of the phone?

Some people's brains are terribly dysfunctional; the chemicals and compounds that govern it hopelessly disordered. Once these people were thought to be posessed by the devil. They were subjected to "exorcisms" that broke them body and soul. They were shut away from the light of day and forgotten.

Some people's brains allow them to create masterpieces of astonishing beauty, write music that moves us in ways that are as mysterious as they are profound, solve puzzles and prove theories that have baffled mankind for centuries, and compose poems and stories that chronicle the human condition in all it's wonder and wretchedness. Those things transport us outside of ourselves.

And yet there is evidence that many of those people are "different". There is speculation that Mozart, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Charles Dickens, Napolean, Handel, Berlioz, Van Gogh...to name just a few, suffered disabilities such as Asperger's syndrome, ADHD, Autism, and Dyslexia.

Albert Einstein, like my Diminutive One, did not speak until he was three. Thomas Edison did not read until he was twelve. George Washington was barely literate.

How astounding. Some of the most famous, brilliant, and creative minds in history, were "unconventional".

Once, on a particularly bad and hopeless day, I wept copiously in the office of Diminutive One's therapist. What she said to me will probably stay with me the rest of my life.

"Listen..there isn't a famous person out there who wasn't a complete pain in the ass as a child. Artists, authors, scientists and war heroes...every one of them had a mother who tore her hair out in despair when they were young."

I often wonder how my unconventional child will make his mark on the world. I often wonder what mysteries his brain holds. Sometimes I can appreciate his uniqueness. Sometimes, I just wish for a normal kid.

And sometimes, I run across something that reminds me just how complex and uncharted the human brain really is, and illustrates to me that anything is possible, even for those who seem in some ways disabled.

The other night on American Idol, Paula called David Archuleta a "savant", which is a complete mischaracterization. I was trying to explain to Husband the difference between a savant and a prodigy, but I was having a hard time articulating my thoughts.

So I turned to that most wondrous of modern tools; Google.

This is what I found:



I find that so amazing and intriguing, and just...wonderful.

But I'm sure that if you asked his mother, she would rather he have a conventional brain and live a conventional life.

And yet, people such as Steven Wiltshire, Kim Peek, and Daniel Tammet give us a glimpse into the true potential of the human brain.

Perhaps someday, that potential will be realized.

Until then, we can only marvel at those who have a smidgen of true greatness within the dark and twisted runnels of their beautiful brains and hope that one of them will provide the key to the mysteries that lie within.

Space is not the last frontier. I believe that distinction belongs to the human brain.

At least we no longer torture and imprison, disregard and condemn the different, the unique, the retarded and the mad.

Such is the measure of our progress as a human race.