The Mind Creative - NOVEMBER 2013 NOVEMBER 2013 | Page 7

The Mind Creative Nov 2013

He used the telephone directory to practice mental arithmetic
and managed to add columns of 7 digit numbers till the totals in
his head were in trillions. It was in 1984 that he was spotted by
the American screenplay writer Barry Morrow when the latter
realised that Kim remembered every postcode, area code, and
road number in every state across America. A few years later,
Barry wrote the script for the film The Rain Man and Dustin
Hoffman played the role of the character based on Kim Peek.
The success of this film had many benefits for Kim. He went on
to make many friends and travelled as a celebrity, demonstrating
his amazing skills for audiences. He was also awarded the high
school certificate that was denied to him for over 20 years.
Tests were then conducted
on
Kim
by
leading
neuroscientists and it was
discovered that he had no
corpus
callosum,
the
membrane that separates
the two hemispheres of
the brain and filters
information. This implied
that his brain was like a
giant databank that could
store
information
in
prodigious amounts and
also provide the foundation for his photographic memory. He was
the only savant known to science who could read two pages of
a book simultaneously – one with each eye, regardless of whether
it was upside down or sideways on. The fact that Kim could retain
98 per cent of the information he absorbed, led to experts
declaring him to be a "megasavant"'.
Throughout his life, Kim was looked after by his father Fran Peek
who estimates that Kim had addressed over two million people
at conferences, lectures and presentations. Despite having the
mental capabilities of a five year old, Kim Peek managed to
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