Kim Peek was the model author Barrow Morrow used for the original "Rain Man" script and screenplay, but the final product retained only a small part of the original story.
When he's home in Utah, Peek spends afternoons at the Salt Lake City Public Library poring over books, even memorizing phone books and the Cole's address directory. In the case of Kim Peek, an autistic savant initially diagnosed as mentally retarded, Kim was born without a corpus callosum connecting the two hemispheres of his brain. He also no longer reads only nonfiction, Fran Peek said, but has dabbled with some fiction, such as books by Stephen King, because that is what so many people talk about. But now, after speaking to more than two million people over the years, his father says he become calmer and is more at ease speaking in front of people. The story of Kim Peek, and of savant syndrome generally, is a story of the brains extraordinary neuroplasticity, and the ways in which that plasticity allows for humans to compensate for their disabilities with wondrous and spectacular abilities.
#Kim peek brain scan movie#
He was a shy young man with few social skills when the movie propelled him to public notice. The condition was part of the mysterious brain physiology of Laurence Kim Peek, the remarkable savant portrayed by Dustin Hoffman in the 1987 movie Rain Man. It is likely that is why Peek has been able to memorize more than 9,000 books, his father said.īut he has lagged in other areas his motor skills developed more slowly than those of his peers.įran Peek doesn't need the test results to know much has changed for his son in the last 16 years. They reveal new details about the condition known as agenesis of the corpus callosum, which is one of the top genetic causes of autism. Later tests showed his brain hemispheres are not separated, forming a single, large ''data storage'' area. When Kim Peek was born, doctors found a water blister on the right side of his skull, similar to hydrocephalus. He came to the attention of NASA researchers at the Center for Bioinformatics Space Life Sciences at the NASA-AMES Research Center when he spoke in late October at a Rotary Club in central California. He could read much faster than the average human with his left eye scanning the. If someone gave him his address he’d immediately be able to tell them the names of the people who live next door! And in later life, he could even play music on the piano (from memory, naturally!), although not with any great musical flair."The goal is to measure what happens in Kim's brain when he expresses things and when he thinks about them,'' said his father, Fran. Kim was a MegaSavant - One with an incredible memory. And it wasn’t just the history and geography questions, for which he could have memorised lists of data – he memorised Shakespeare’s plays (verbatim), and musical compositions (note for note), local history and traffic details, even down to the trivial and (dare I say it) instantly forgettable.
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A bold claim, but the facts speak for themselves he could answer questions on many subjects, and give full and detailed answers, revealing a truly gargantuan memory. Treffert, an expert on savantism, commented in an interview, “He was the Mount Everest of memory”. The film was actually instrumental in educating the general public about autism and savantism, although there are still misconceptions (such as that all autistic people are savants – that’s just not the case).
It is said that it is the most hugged Oscar of them all, since he was always keen to share it with people at the public gatherings he attended later in his life, as a direct result of the film. The analyses of Kim Peeks brain showed that the major nerves that forms a. He felt he owed so much to Kim that he gave him the Oscar, which he carried with him the rest of his life. He was able to scan the pages of any book, one with his each eye and all. This became Rain Man, for which he was awarded an Oscar. Kim Peek, the real Rain ManĪfter a chance meeting with Kim Peek, Barry Morrow, a screenwriter, astonished that such a person could exist, decided to write a story about an autistic savant who was ‘rediscovered’ by his brother. Boyle, director of the Center in California where he underwent MRI brain scans. Not only that, but he was getting smarter in his areas of expertise as he got older, according to Richard D. But a savant he certainly was – or should that be mega-savant, since his prodigious memory allowed him to become expert in several different fields, including history, sports, geography, music and literature.
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