Struck By Genius
How a Brain Injury Made Me a Mathematical Marvel
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2.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Padgett was, at 31, a man who seemed to care more about his biceps than his career until a brutal mugging completely changed the floundering course of his life. What initially manifested as an altered, more intense experience of visual phenomena developed into dizzying synesthesia and a newfound, savant-level capacity for mathematics. Pi quickly replaced partying in Padgett's life. But there were physical ramifications, too: Padgett's muscles withered into a leaner frame and the former gadfly became almost dangerously prone to isolation, the outside world too stimulating for his new senses. Yet Padgett ultimately reemerges into society by attending community college, meeting his eventual wife, pursuing yoga, and continuing to learn about his condition. Psychology Today blogger Seaberg serves as witness and scribe to the events of Padgett's life, though the clear and personable tone that she and Padgett collectively strike won't fully sate readers' curiosity about the book's miracles. The arc of the story, however, upholds the notion that positive turns come from unexpected places, and the implication that we all possess an inherent type of genius, whatever its truth, is sure to garner at least a modicum of public attention. 17 b&w drawings, 8p. 4-color insert.
