I had written that the only thing that all the different cultures hadin common was the human brain. Indigenous cultures, separated byvast spans of space and time, did not teach their incredibly similarmemory tools to one another. They must all use the same methodsfor innately human reasons.

The answer lies in our ability to use story, art and music toenhance our learning skills, and in our intense connection to thedetails within our physical environment. We can use these skills notonly to store information and increase our knowledge but also, evenmore importantly, to explore new ideas. They help us see creativesolutions to the way things are, and envisage the way they could be.

‘As a single-gene condition withhigh autism penetrance, NF1 presents a valuable genetic model foradvancing our understanding of the neurobiological mechanisms ofautism,’ writes one group of researchers.20

The apparent link of music to speech is because of a trait calledprosody, which seems to be a separate skill, also impacted by NF1.In linguistics, prosody is the difference between speaking in amonotone compared with adding expression by varying pitch,loudness, duration, stress and rhythms. People exaggerate theprosody in their speech when talking to young children because ofthe impact dynamic expression has on comprehension andengagement. Those with the NF1 disorder, most of whom suffermusical challenges, often don’t perceive prosody in speech. Thatsuggests that our fully functioning NF1 gene also helps us withprosody.

Sacks describes the confusion hefeels when noting that people with amusia can be virtually normal intheir speech skills while profoundly disabled musically. He asks if thetwo can be so totally different, given that speech involves tonal andrhythmic changes which appear to have a musical basis. Maybe thisgenetic distinction offers a pathway to exploring his question.

sabelle Peretz and DominiqueVuvan conducted a large-scale sample in 2017, with 20,000participants drawn from the general public. They reported that ‘theprevalence of congenital amusia is only 1.5 per cent, with slightlymore females than males, unlike other developmental disorderswhere males often predominate’.11

All Indigenous cultures rely on music as a primaryknowledge technology.

People with the NF1 disorder are highly likely to sufferfrom amusia, an inability to hear differences in musical tones.

Dr Andrea Alveshere is an Associate Professor in Anthropology andChemistry at the Western Illinois University

one of the world’s leadingexperts on NF1, Dr Vincent Riccardi

neurofibromatosis

The Northern European Sámi drums are coveredin markings that look very like the mnemonic marks I had studiedelsewhere.

I hadbecome obsessed with Chinese handscrolls, a painted narrative formthat seemed to me to be cognitively the same as AustralianAboriginal sand talk.

I had been taken to some rock cairns which are atop some of themountains in south-eastern Alaska. What was this? Rocks in thoserock formations were used to help tell part of a story, and each rockcairn had different stories associated with it.After being taken to the rock cairns, I had been fascinated byother rock formations from around the world, such as Stonehenge. Ihad always wondered: who were the storytellers that usedStonehenge? What knowledge was shared? The decades passed butmy curiosity about rock formations found around the world neverwent away.

David KanoshYooḵis’kooḵéikTlingit Elder and storyteller,South-Eastern Alaska

I made my own memory boards. As I glued each piece to theplywood, I thought about the stories I would tell with this memoryboard. I had spent an afternoon just putting on five pebbles! Howdid my grandmother make it look so easy? Practice. She’d been atthis for a while.

The beautifully carved totem poles, wooden carved ceremonialhats and even the wooden carved rattles. They are more than art.They serve a very practical purpose. Each had places orloci that Ihad used to elaborately encode information.