Struck By Genius
How A Brain Injury Made Me A Mathematical Marve
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No one sees the world quite the way Jason Padgett does: Water pours from the faucet in crystalline patterns. Each number has a distinct geometric shape. Fractal patterns emerge from the movement of tree branches and the swirl of cream in his coffee. The objects around him reveal their hidden mathematical patterns.
The amazing thing is that Jason wasn't born this way. Twelve years ago, he was an ordinary guy, a jock who loved to party and who hadn't made it past pre-algebra in high school. One night, a vicious blow to the head in an altercation profoundly and permanently changed the way his brain worked. Jason would eventually learn that his injury had made him an acquired savant and a synesthete-someone whose blended sense perception causes such strange effects as the ability to taste shapes, to hear colours and to see numbers as geometric objects. Suddenly Jason saw the world in a completely different way. As the first documented case of acquired savant syndrome with his particular type of mathematical synesthesia, he is a medical marvel.
Struck by Genius recounts how Padgett overcame enormous setbacks and embraced his transformed mind. Along the way he found love, discovered joy in numbers and spent plenty of time having his head examined. This fascinating and inspiring story about the abilities that lie hidden within all of us reveals how much we still have to learn about the wondrous potential of the human brain.
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Reviews
"A remarkable and wonderfully personal medical tale. It reminds us in equal measure about our possible capacities and our impoverished understanding about how to tap into them." --David Eagleman, neuroscientist and author of Incognito: The Secret Lives Of The Brain
"Jason Padgett's story is an extraordinary example of the human capacity for adaptation and the immense importance of exploring the individual strengths hidden inside every person's brain." --Temple Grandin, author of The Autistic Brain and Thinking In Pictures
"Like Dorothy in Oz, Jason sees the man behind the curtain. Except in his case, the wizard is not a trickster but the normal operations of the brain that, in the rest of us, take place outside of consciousness. Struck by Genius is a journey of self-teaching--about what had happened to his brain, why he became a different person overnight, and what the meaning of it was." --Richard E. Cytowic, neurologist and co-author of Wednesday Is Indigo Blue: Discovering The Brain Of Synesthesia
"Acquired savant syndrome is an incredible phenomenon which points toward dormant potential--a little Rain Man perhaps--within us all. Jason Padgett's experience affirms that medical marvel in a demonstrable and irrefutable way. His compelling story calls for even more urgent inquiry into that remarkable, optimistic manifestation which holds great promise for better understanding of both the brain and human potential." --Darold A. Treffert, M.D., author of Islands Of Genius: The Bountiful Mind Of The Autistic, Acquired and Sudden Savant
"Modern neuroscience, in spite of its tremendous progress, tends to ignore folk wisdom about the brain's remarkable potential for change and growth. Struck by Genius restores the balance and marshals evidence that there are astonishing abilities in all of us, presently unfathomable, waiting to be unleashed." --V. S. Ramachandran, neuroscientist and author of The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest For What Makes Us Human
"A remarkable, heartwarming and unforgettable first-person account of one man's struggle to comprehend his sudden genius in the wake of a traumatic assault. This truly amazing incident opens up a whole new dimension for science to explore." --Berit Brogaard, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Miami and Director of the Brogaard Lab For Multisensory Research
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