My December issue of Scientific American arrived today and, much to my delight, it contains an article entitled, "Inside the Mind of a Savant." It features the rather famous savant, Kim Peek, now 54 years old. The reason for my interest involves a book that I have been TRYING to write for the last six years, one theme of which has to do with the pre-Fall mind of Adam. The thesis behind this is that, pre-Fall and pre-Curse, Adam's mental capacity would surely have been remarkably keener than that of our fallen, depraved, sin-infected minds. So I have been investigating (on and off) brain defects that seem to free up the brain to allow the subjects to do amazingly complex things and have extraordinary memories.
One new fact that was brought out in the article was that savants' brains often lack the corpus callosum, the thick band of tissue that connects the two hemispheres of the brain. That is the tissue that is severed in the so-called "split-brain" operation sometimes used to prevent seizures from spreading from one side of the brain to the other. The other interesting fact is that some "normal" people lack the corpus callosum--and their brains work just fine. This has fascinating implications for my research. Did Adam's brain have the corpus? Is the corpus a result of the Fall? I realize this is a far-out thought, but it is surely worth thinking about.
Another reason that this subject is so interesting is that I have been using the split-brain as an analogy for the relationship of science and religion. But I'll leave an analysis of that analogy for another bloggeration (I think I just coined a term there :-) In fact I just may change the name of my blog...
p.s. I just Googled for "bloggeration" and had several hits--so I guess I missed out on claiming ownership of a neologism. But I think I'll use it anyway.
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