Earlier this week there was a program on BBC America about Stephen Wiltshire, a British artist who is autistic, and who is sometimes referred to as “The Human Camera”. Stephen’s unique talent is the ability to draw, with exquisite detail and accurate perspective, buildings and entire cityscapes from memory. A 15- to 30-minute helicopter flight over a large city such as Tokyo, Rome, or Hong Kong is sufficient to allow Stephen to produce a precise panoramic drawing, including hundreds of buildings and structures – a feat which requires several days to complete. London is Stephen’s favorite city, and the panoramic drawing that includes Canary Wharf, Tower Bridge, and St Paul’s Cathedral is featured in the recent documentary; after a 15-minute bird’s eye helicopter view, it required 5 days to complete. Stephen fielded questions from admirers, experts, and children from the Queensmill School (of which he is the most famous former pupil) throughout the drawing process. Several photographers, architects, and structural engineers checked the drawing for accuracy and attention to proportion and detail.

Stephen’s memory and artistic genius are not his only unusual characteristics: he has overcome many of the disabling aspects of autism, and has his own successful art gallery and business. He is working on arts degrees and expanding his repertoire of techniques, and travels around London on his own to sketch his favorite buildings and scenes. Of course, autistic savants with remarkable abilities are exceedingly rare, but nevertheless, such talents have their basis in the neural circuitry, neural plasticity, and neurochemistry of the human brain. We don’t understand the mechanisms that give rise to extraordinary abilities now, but as a developmental neurobiologist, I think that such processes can be characterized and understood in the future, and hope that such knowledge could be used to help autistic individuals find their ways in the world. For a speculative fiction perspective on future knowledge of and attitudes toward autism, try The Speed of Dark, by Elizabeth Moon.