Treffert further speculates that savants with exceptional memories may somehow hand over the duties of maintaining declarative memories, like facts and figures, to the more primitive nondeclarative memory systems, like those that help us recall how to ride a bike or catch a fly ball without consciously thinking about it (the same systems that allow the amnesic HM to draw in the mirror and EP to navigate his neighborhood without knowing his address). Consider how much mental processing must take place just to position one’s hand to catch a fly ball—the
As we develop AI, this becomes obvious
