HFA, savantism. and the frustrating consequences.

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Hello friends, I'm new here.

I'm a 17 year old male diagnosed with High-Function Autism (HFA). Mark my words - I am not looking to induce jealousy when I say this, but one could consider me to be a musical savant. All my life I had taken it for granted. For a while I just attributed it to how I was raised. My mother and father are talented musicians, and my father had routinely played Brahms, Bach, Beehtoven (the big B's!), Chopin, Mendelssohn, Schubert (I could go on) ever since I was born. I have heard entrancing piano pieces every day of my life, even when there is no music playing. Certain sonatas, fugues, capriccios and even symphonies pound away mercilessly in my head, note for note, even when there is seemingly utter silence. I started noticing this at a very young age, probably around early elementary school. This was around the time when I had learned how to stop talking for once and actually listen to others, and consequently myself.

As I aged I started to realize that the gift I was blessed with was not something I should take for granted. Apart from the Piano skills I obtained from watching my dad play, I really hadn't "learned" an instrument. So in a pathetic attempt to "fit in", I decided to pick up guitar. This was about 5 years ago, and I have been playing ever since. My interest in music erupted, and my desire to learn a variety of musical instruments was burning. Currently I can play Piano, Guitar, Bass, Banjo, Ukulele, Drums, Violin/Viola, Trumpet, Trombone, and several "quirky" instruments like the Xylophone and the harmonica. The rate at which I can learn instruments is allegedly astounding.

I guess I am quite verbose so I will get to the point of this thread. I have some sort of musical memory, and it plagues me. I cannot even read sheet music, because I don't need to. Play me a piano piece I've never heard before and I can likely play it note for note after one or two tries. I have memorized hundreds of sonatas and scales. I can play any obscure atonal scale forwards with some pattern-like alteration of the notes, then I can play it backwards, then I can invert the alteration and do it all over again.

It is obvious to me that I have a very powerful memory. As I type this in my room with utter silence, "Pathetique Movement 2" is playing in my head as clear as day. Now that the few people actually reading this understand what my memory is capable of, let me ask the question I am meaning to ask.

Why can't I remember my best (only) friends birthday? Why can't I memorize more than 10 digits of Pi? Why do I forget how to spell very simple words? Why do I routinely lose my phone and my wallet? This powerful memory of music overwhelms me, but the moment I try to remember something as simple as the day of the week I amaze myself with my forgetfulness. Every single person I meet insists that I am some sort of genius, only to become disgusted when I forget such simple things that any decent human being would remember, such as their name. It's so amazingly frustrating trying to live up to people's high expectations just because I am unnaturally good at something that I sometimes even resent. I honestly would be happy to trade this "gift" in just to be normal.

I find my memory and impressions of music are not the same as my memories and impressions of other things. When I am non-verbal - completely unable to talk - I can still sing. I've been called a musical genius as well and can pick up instruments quickly, but my musical memory is not as strong as yours.

I think it has to do with which parts of your brain are engaged, too. I primarily think in images, but can also think in other sensory impressions. However, I can recall a musical piece and have it play in my head rather intensely - I've gone to sleep with a song in my brain (not an earbug) and had it infect my dreams, in a good way.

It may be that those other things you mention do not fall under the same elements of your neurology that your musical abilities do. I've found it's easier for me to remember some things than others - my verbal memory is fairly weak, but my memory for visualization is very accurate.

Yes, you can't live up to other people's expectations--the best you can do is adapt to your situation. I also have trouble with names--even after practicing juggling letters in my head by playing Scrabble. Go figure--I can beat the computer 4 bingos (use all 7 letters in a single play) to none in a single game, yet have difficulty remembering the names of folks I've seen over a dozen times!

A calendar on the refrigerator or some other important place is a good way to keep track of important dates, such as your friend's birthday. You might even label two dates--the date in which you are going to get him a birthday card or gift, and a second which is his actual birthday.

Losing stuff--it helps to always put stuff back in assigned location. Worst case, you can assume you will lose it and plan accordingly so it isn't as much of a hassle when you do.

I'm not a savant by any means because I am not technically brilliant at anything, but I do pick things up a lot quicker than most. This might be to do with that I actually use the combination of visual and kinetic memory which is apparently quite unusual! My auditory is quite poor although as a kid I was able to memorise pieces of music and play them on my keyboard. Only the more basic things though. I only learnt to read music last year and even now I have to hear the piece before I can attempt it.

I also am pretty bad at maths. I can only do the basics such as addition, subtraction and multiplication. I have no idea what pi is nor do I wish to know. It's not going to help me with my job (caring for fuzzy animals) so I don't need it. A lot of people on the spectrum have big trouble with maths. The only thing I have ever done that was odd was to just suddenly pick up a pencil, ruler and paper and start drawing thousands of houses in oblique projection! I didn't know what oblique projection was when I started doing it but my Stepdad told me that's its technical name. Me and my parents still have no idea how it even came into my head because I had never been taught!

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I have HFA, ADHD, OCD & Tourette syndrome. I love animals, especially my bunnies and hamster. I skate in a roller derby team (but I'll try not to bite )

Hi Manifesto,

Welcome to WP

I'm happy to see that there are some here with special gifts and talents!

If I were the "creator", I would endow every person with a gift like yours to offset the negative symptoms and hardships of those who suffer from any form of Autism.

I hope you'll post some music in the Art and Music forum when you're ready.

I need to munch on your cerebral cortex. Just a nibble. Maybe then I can play this $#@$ transverse flute ><

Your brain is very specialized, OP.

This is common with autism. Savant syndrome is the extreme expression of that autistic specialization; less extreme specialization is practically universal on the Spectrum. To use the example of music, I have been able to sing on-key since before I could talk, and by nine years old was improvising harmony lines to any melody I heard even once. I can memorize music easily, still remember songs my mother sang to me when I was a toddler, and trace my way through the patterns involved in music. I can also play the piano, though not at an expert level because I don't have the dexterity to make my fingers do what I want them to do, quickly enough. I'm not a savant, obviously; but what I have is, I think, a less extreme version of what you have, and for both of us, it may be connected to autism.

The connection seems to be that the autistic brain is specialized, with very localized talent. I don't know if you've ever had an IQ test and had a chance to look at the full results, but if you did, you probably looked at the sub-tests and saw a wide range of ability. This was true in my case, and it showed that I have both extreme strengths and significant weaknesses (which, by the way, makes the overall IQ score quite meaningless for predicting performance on any one thing).

It is quite common for autistic people to be very good at one thing, and very bad at other, seemingly closely related things. There are, for example, autistic people who have such difficulty talking that they rely on communication devices to communicate--but communicate so well in writing that they have authored books. There are those who are amazing at arithmetic, but have extreme trouble understanding algebra--or vice versa, like me; I had a lot of trouble with math, having nearly no ability to memorize basic math facts, until I got to algebra, at which point I quickly caught up and got so good at it that I've passed differential equations in college now.

You'll talk to the people around WP and discover they all have their own specialties. Some are artists or writers or scientists; others have collected databases of information about a TV show or a game; a few are even athletes or public speakers. Along with that, most of us have significant weaknesses that express themselves as specific learning disabilities of one sort or another, so that the same person may be eligible for--and need--both a gifted program and a special ed program at school. There are a few of us who are globally gifted--good at academics all-around--but most of the time, what we are is specialized--good at one thing, or a few things--especially in our specialist subjects and special interests. Don't get me wrong; we're not any better than NTs, all-around; we're just more focused.

I think that your brain probably grew in a way that was specialized toward music--specialized quite narrowly. On the Spectrum that's quite common--and don't worry that you'll seem unusual for being a savant here; there are many of us who have that sort of thing going on, in one way or another, and it'll be nice to have another perspective on it.

Don't feel like you "ought" to be as good at everything else as you are at music. That's a neurotypical thing. NTs have strengths, but they're not that extreme, compared to autistic people. Their skills are much more clustered near the same ability level. You can't apply that idea to the autistic cognitive style; you can't have expectations about what you ought to be able to do based on something else you can do. You're a specialist, and you were meant to be one, and that's okay.

I think Callista gave a good explanation of why these things happen.

I wonder if you could use your musical memory as a trick to help you remember other things. Does your musical memory work for the words of songs, or only for melodies and harmonies? If it works for the words of songs, perhaps you could find a way to set things you need to remember to music? That might help for certain kinds of needing to remember things, at least.

There are at least two kinds of failing to remember:
1. When you know you should remember something (such as someone's name, or how to spell something), but can't retrieve the information when you try.

2. When the information ought to come to mind in a certain situation, but it doesn't even occur to you that there's something that ought to be remembered (like remembering to turn off the stove after using it); remembering someone's birthday would tend to fall in this category too.

I don't think it's likely that setting things to music could help with the second, but it might with some things of the first type. My brother didn't learn the order of the months of the year until quite late - he was probably in his teens. I set them to a familiar melody for him, and he's known them ever since. He says he still uses the song to remember the order of the months. (My brother is not autistic, and I don't think his musical memory is extraordinary, although it's pretty good.)