Extraordinary Human Abilities

There are people who have the ability to recall a scene as if they were looking at a photograph, and some other people (1) ............................. after one hearing. What other extraordinary abilities might humans have? I’ve listed some of the most well-understood and interesting abilities.

Supertasters

People who taste with greater intensity than the rest of the population are called supertasters. Having extra fungiform papillae (the mushroom-shaped bumps on the tongue that are covered in taste buds) is the reason (2) ............................. to taste. Supertasters will often dislike certain foods, particularly bitter ones, such as Brussel sprouts, cabbage, coffee and grapefruit juice. Women, Asians and Africans are most likely to have a higher number of fungiform papillae that make them supertasters.

Mental calculators

Some people are able to perform complex mental calculations, and most of them are also autistic savants. While there are many trained people who can do multiplications of large numbers in their head extremely fast, the untrained (3) ............................. interesting. Examples of people with extraordinary calculation skills include Daniel McCartney, Salo Finkelstein and Alexander Aitken. Daniel Tammet is one of the few who are also autistic savants.

Eidetic memory

When a person has photographic memory or total recall, this is called eidetic memory. It is the ability to remember sounds, (4) ............................. extreme accuracy. Examples of eidetic memory include the effort of Akira Haraguchi, who recited from memory the first 100,000 decimal places of pi, and the drawings of Stephen Wiltshire, who is also an autistic savant. His recreation of Rome is amazing. Whether true photographic memory exists in adults is still a controversial issue, but it is accepted that eidetic abilities are distributed evenly between men and women.