看过电影《雨人》的人，一定不会忘记那个患有孤独症、却拥有超常计算能力的“雨人”。“雨人”的原型为美国犹他州盐湖城的金·皮克。目前，美国国家航空航天局（NASA）正在对皮克的大脑进行研究，试图通过大脑扫描图像破解其神脑的秘密。

    据《卫报》12月11日报道，现年54岁的皮克能背诵9000多本书，能在地图上指出美国大小城市的正确位置，能记住世界历史大事件发生的确切日期……从历史、文学、地理，到数字、体育、音乐、日期等，皮克在15门学科上都是一个奇才。同时，皮克也有着严重的生理缺陷，他患有运动神经残疾，需要别人帮他洗澡、刷牙等。

    日前，科学家在最新一期的《科学美国》杂志上发表论文指出，他们正在通过研究皮克的超常能力解开人类智力的更多奥秘，为人类挖掘更多的智力潜能提供方式。来自威斯康星大学医学的达罗·特雷费特博士是一名精神病专家，也是该论文的作者之一。他在不同场合研究过金。

    特雷费特指出：“皮克的奇迹告诉我们，人类大脑比我们想象的更加灵活，就像许多奇才一样，皮克大脑中有一个部位不具备正常的能力，但是大脑其它部位却因此获得超常的能力。这表明，人类大脑还具有惊人的、尚未开发的能力。通过对皮克和其他奇才的研究，我们可以获得开发大脑智力潜能的方式。”

    从2003年10月至今，美国国家航空航天局开始研究皮克的大脑。美国国家航空航天局取得皮克大脑的X光断层照片和核磁共振扫描图，并获得太空航行对宇航员影响的数据，然后将数据合成在皮克大脑的三维图像上，以观察皮克的大脑如何反映和思考这些数据，弄清他大脑的工作方式。

    皮克出生时，医生们曾发现他的头盖骨右半部有一个水疱。后来的测试显示，皮克的大脑竟然没有像普通人那样左右半球分开，而是形成了一个单独的、巨大的“数据储存区”。皮克的两只眼睛在看书时可以看不同的两页，而且能记住每个单词。一般人看一页文字用3分钟，而他只用10秒且能永远记住他看过的98％的东西。皮克能准确说出历史上任何一天是星期几，还能预测天气，看见天气预报员看不见的气象图。虽然皮克的身体协调能力差到不会给衣服扣扣子，但最近两年他却能指法娴熟的弹奏钢琴。

    特雷费特博士指出，唯一能解释皮克异常的原因是他的大脑不像正常人那样右半球受左半球的控制，但这也意味着他大脑的右半球部分能更加自由的发挥能力，且显示出惊人的水平。

    It took Kim Peek just over an hour to read Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October. Four months later, when asked to give the name of the book's Russian radio operator, Peek quoted the entire relevant passage.

    It was a prodigious feat. Yet for Peek - the real-life 'savant' on whom Dustin Hoffman's character in the film Rain Man is based - such recall only gives a glimpse of his powers. He knows 9,000 books off by heart; he can direct people around US cities from maps he has memorised years ago; and he has total recall of the dates of all major world events.

    Now studies of Peek's abilities are being used by scientists to shed intriguing light on the human mind, and to open the way for men and women to exploit far more of their intellectual potential, as the latest issue of Scientific American reveals.

    'Kim's story tells us that the human brain is far more flexible than we had thought,' said Darold Treffert, a psychiatrist and co-author of the Scientific American paper told The Observer. 'Like many other savants, he has suffered disability in one area of his brain, but has compensated by acquiring remarkable new abilities in other areas. This shows we all have considerable hidden intellectual potential. By studying Kim and other savants, we can learn how to tap those powers.'

    This potential has been of particular interest to Nasa - currently carrying out lengthy electronic scans of Kim's brain in its attempts to understand how astronauts are using their brains while on deep space missions.

    Kim - now 54 - was born with a malformed cerebellum, at the base of his brain, and lacks a corpus callosum, the thick bundle of nerves that normally connects the brain's two hemispheres. As a child he was assumed to be suffering from severe mental retardation.

    Only later was his condition found to be more complex. He had superb abilities at arithmetic but could not deal with the abstractions of mathematics. In 1988 he was given an IQ rating of 87, well below average. Yet some of his subscores were in the genius bracket, while others plunged into the mentally retarded range.

    Kim has poor physical co-ordination, cannot button his shirts but has remarkable memory power and has started to develop as an accomplished pianist in the last two years. This latest development - in a man in his 50s with large chunks of his brain missing - is particularly significant, added Treffert. 'His brain is still adapting to his condition, even in mid-life.'

    One key to understanding Kim's condition is that his right and left brain hemispheres are not connected. Our left brain, in which our linguistic prowess has its centre, tends to dominate our right. That has not happened with Kim, however, suggesting the possibility that his right brain has been allowed to develop more freely and reach a greater potential than normal.

    Kim displays little personal interest in people outside the arithmetical details of their lives. When I talked to him by phone in his home in Salt Lake City last week, he asked for my birthday. I told him. 'Ah, you were born on a Sunday, your next birthday will be a Sunday, and you are scheduled to retire on a Thursday,' he replied, correctly.

    'He remembers 98 per cent of what he reads,' said his father Fran. 'It's like downloading data on to a hard disk - except his never crashes.'