Struck By Genius: How a Brain Injury Made Me a Mathematical Marvel

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.