Sudden savant syndrome, in which exceptional abilities emerge after brain injury
The kind of genius associated with autistic syndrome appears to me that it could be a result of reduced functionality in certain brain regions related to social functions and boredom control. Most people do not enjoy focusing on a single activity for most of their waking hours. Someone who consistently practices a craft for 8 hours a day would accumulate >10,000 hours in just 4 years, sufficient to become an expert in most non-professional activites. Within 15 years, such focus would yield >40,000 hours which is more than the actual practice time most professionals have under their belt. (Most normal professionals do not really get to practice their craft 8 hours a day and they probably take more vacations than these ‘geniuses’ do.)A further boost might come from less distraction and inhibition since their brains might not be influenced as much by the presence and potential judgements of other people. Genius-level work tends to be out of norm and most adults are conditioned to avoid standing out too much. If a potential Einstein were highly sensitive to established scientific worldview at the time, they probably would be discouraged from persisting for 10 years to solve the mystery in their imagination, or at least miss the path that veers off too much from the standard theory.From the article: “Muybridge was no exception. After the bet, he moved to Philadelphia and continued with his passion for capturing motion on film, photographing all kinds of activities such as walking up and down the stairs and, oddly, himself swinging a pickaxe in the nude. Between 1883 and 1886, he took more than 100,000 pictures.”