From a Filipino marimba prodigy to a hyper-precise British carpenter to Kim Peek, the person with an eidetic memory whose character was portrayed by Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, stories of gifted people who have developmental disabilities have created buzz for decades.

Now scientists are beginning to understand the link, and have begun to speculate how the new information might apply to “neurotypicals.”

King’s College scientist Patricia Howlin for example, will soon post a paper in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society suggesting that up to 30% of autistic people possess some kind of savant-like ability in areas like computation and music.

And Francesca Happe will contribute a piece suggesting that the genius may derive from RBBIs, restrictive and repetitive behaviors that are a sine qua non of the autistic spectrum.

Obsessive interests and behaviors, Happe speculates, enable afflicted individuals to practice, even if inadvertently, the skill they have become obsessed with.

Malcolm Gladwell wouldn’t disagree.

In his new book, “Outliers,” the popular author cites research suggesting that many people can achieve greatness at something if they’re willing to practice it for oh, say, 10,000 hours.

According to the line of reasoning, this would be cake for many autistic individuals, whereas their neurotypical counterparts would long since have given up due to boredom.

To build her case, Happé refers to a twin study that found childhood talent in art and music to be associated with RRBIs, even in people that do not meet classical criteria for autism.

As Happe explained to the Economist, “the child with autism who would happily spend hours spinning coins, or watching drops of water fall from his fingers, might be considered a connoisseur, seeing minute differences between events that others regard as pure repetition.”

Earlier today, the FDA released a consumer advisory telling users of 14 Hydroxycut weight-loss products to “immediately stop” using them since they may cause jaundice and liver failure.

The regulatory agency has received 23 reports of serious health incidents involving the trendy nutritional supplements, which are also sold as fat burners and energy-enhancers.

One death has been reported, a 19-year-old male.

Hydroxycut products are marketed by Lovate Health Sciences Inc. of Canada. The company agreed to recall the products in question.

The recalled products are: Regular Rapid Release Caplets, Caffeine-Free Rapid Release Caplets, Hardcore Liquid Capsules, Max Liquid Capsules, Regular Drink Packets, Caffeine-Free Drink Packets, Hardcore Drink Packets (Ignition Stix), Max Drink Packets, Liquid Shots, Hardcore RTDs, Max Aqua Shed, 24, Carb Control and Natural.

No one seems to know which ingredients or ingredient combinations are hepatotoxic.

The advisory states that “although the liver damage appears to be relatively rare, the FDA believes consumers should not be exposed to unnecessary risk.”

Lovate claims that millions of people have used its products over the years, that it conducts internal analyses of individual ingredients and that it undertakes extensive medical, scientific and toxicological literature reviews on the safety of the ingredients before releasing each product to market.

Other Hydroxycut products, such as Cleanse and Hoodia, are not being recalled.

Lovate produces more than 750 products and distributes them in 70 countries.

Scientists at SUNY Downstate have demonstrated that injecting a compound known as ZIP into the brains of mice causes them to instantly forget distasteful memories, raising hope the stuff could someday be used to treat humans with PTSD or drug addiction.

Todd Sacktor and colleagues made the discovery after deducing that a substance known as PKMzeta was involved in murine memory.

Sacktor’s group found for example, that when neurons in the hippocampus and neocortex of mice were activated by a certain memory, they released PKMzeta to recruit nearby neurons. This apparently helped the brain construct visual, auditory and olfactory components of that particular experience.
 
These PKMzeta molecules subsequently remained at their new locations, effectively hard-wiring the memory for easy recall at a later time.

Sacktor’s group then leveraged work by André Fenton, a colleague at SUNY Downstate, who had devised a technique for generating powerful spatial location memories in mice such as the position in a chamber where they could expect to receive an electric shock.

Once Fenton’s mice learned the avoidance behavior, they didn’t forget, at least until Sacktor nailed ‘em with a short, sharp, shot of ZIP. Almost instantly thereafter, the mice behaved as if they had completely forgotten the lesson.

“If this molecule is as important as it appears to be, you can see the implications,” Sacktor told the New York Times. “For trauma. For addiction, which is a learned behavior. Ultimately for improving memory and learning.”

But Thomas Carew, a neuroscientist at UC Irvine was circumspect. “There is not going to be one, single memory molecule, the system is not that simple,” he said. “There are going to be many molecules involved, in different kinds of memories, all along the process of learning, storage and retrieval.”