Knocked out in bar fight, man wakes up as a genius

Ever wanted to be a savant? now you can with in just a few minutes with just a little life threatening beating!!!

In 2002, two men savagely attacked Jason Padgett outside a karaoke bar, leaving him with a severe concussion and post-traumatic stress disorder. But the incident also turned Padgett into a mathematical genius who sees the world through the lens of geometry.

Padgett, a furniture salesman from Tacoma, Washington, who had very little interest in academics, developed the ability to visualize complex mathematical objects and physics concepts intuitively. The injury, while devastating, seems to have unlocked part of his brain that makes everything in his world appear to have a mathematical structure.

Now, researchers have figured out which parts of the man's brain were rejiggered to allow for such savant skills, and the findings suggest such skills may lie dormant in all human brains.

More at Source

Soon after the attack, Padgett suffered from PTSD and debilitating social anxiety. But at the same time, he noticed that everything looked different. He describes his vision as "discrete picture frames with a line connecting them, but still at real speed." If you think of vision as the brain taking pictures all the time and smoothing them into a video, it's as though Padgett sees the frames without the smoothing. In addition, "everything has a pixilated look," he said.

Amazing drawings, too bad he does not use his new found mental powers to umm i don't know do something useful or solve some of the world problems? Yeah I'm just jealous of his spirograph abilities.

So it seems killing a few neurons in your brain is good for you:

In another study, that when neurons die, they release brain-signaling chemicals that can increase brain activity in surrounding areas. The increased activity usually fades over time, but sometimes it results in structural changes that can cause brain-activity modifications to persist

Or leave you as a vegetable, without any psychic powers I foreseen a headline saying brain dead drunk after trying to get savant abilities

Could this mean a return of the Lobotomy as a fad for some people to try to be smart? after all in lobotomy they were killing a piece of the brain to try to force a mod change, if researchers believe the dying of the neurons are the trigger to the development of other regions, a surgical procedure would be more reproducible than a blow to the head, laser lobotomy for everyone in the future!!!

I think this man is just some random accident and 99.999% of the time someone get a concussion it just make dumber the people but still, it makes me want to have Lego vision and see the world in its repetitive building bricks, at least for a while

Why always all in life have consequences, for this man his not so useful vision of the world had, apart from the possibility of dying in the process of acquiring it, post traumatic stress disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder that don't allow him to interact with public.

a reply to: Indigent

Now, researchers have figured out which parts of the man's brain were rejiggered to allow for such savant skills, and the findings suggest such skills may lie dormant in all human brains.

I think this is the most important revelation in the OP.

If true, it has immediate implications on how to advance the entire human race.

Just imagine if you could "re-wire" a part of your brain to see things like he does, but without the brutal beating and side-effects he has experienced. (poor guy, I feel for him)

This might not be a revelation at all, but if they can figure out how to do this in anyone, it would be world-altering.

~Namaste

a reply to: SonOfTheLawOfOne

We are how we are for a reason, if we start to see the world different what else could change in our behavior, perhaps the isolation of the guy its not part of the beating but an adaptation of the brain to the new way of seeing things.

I always heard some autistic were very smart and saw the world different, perhaps the lack of social skills is an unavoidable trade off.

Also one thing is to know what change, another is to be able to change it at will.

It's nothing to do with the beating in my opinion.

Ive been drawing these for years and only realised what it was I was drawing because of what I had learned here on ATS.
FLOWER OF LIFE
SACRED GEOMETRY

I also found out that the other thing I can do is in fact called
"Thought Experiment"

Some say its psychic I thought it was coincidence.

Some of my threads here on ATS are done using the above.

There is also other connections that I made ages ago regarding the sun earthquakes and the formation of low and high pressure weather systems prior or preceding.

As above so below lol

Its actually obvious blatantly obvious and yes to everyone it's just that some seem to justify their own positions by making things sound toooooooo complicated for others to know.

Nothing is complicated and everything has a right way.

But hey what do I know im just the messenger.

Have faith in God and believe and ask and you will receive. But be warned, money to God isn't riches but what I know and what I see proved to me that money is just a way to create divisions and keep people from the eeal understanding and real way we all should be headed.

Although I truly believe and have faith in the grand architect of all things,......I can't however point him out or show you.

God's a lil hard to explain in words since I don't believe the word is actually in any of our vocabulary.

More of a feeling and sense that we have come to label with a word.

God, short and simple but I like it.

For whatever reason, there's a lot of our brains areas that we can't access. Some are born with access(Tesla). Some can access it after an injury, or a life or death situation. Others can access it through meditation. Some have gotten there with drugs. Wherever or whatever it is, -that's where all knowledge of the universe resides. I think that even the most intelligent minds on earth are just skimming the top of this lake of knowledge.

Either way, I wouldn't suggest anyone go for a head injury in hopes of being smarter after. Chances are you'll die, or end up mentally handicapped.

Very, very interesting...





Lol, he got the amnesia knocked out of him. We all have it we just forgot so it doesn't take away from the experience of, well, experiencing...

Great find!

a reply to: SonOfTheLawOfOne

could say the same about autism ... the mind is truly amazing ... some believe just like the various autistic traits of genius in some individuals, we all have these abilities, but as science speculates we only use (or are 'able' to use), 10% of our brain power, we will not be able to 'fully' tap into these abilities ...

some believe we have been limited on purpose .. but thats another conspiracy for another thread .. but if we were able to tap into our own brains full potential .. then we would all be able to do what this man does .. and we would all be amazing artists .. and we would all be inventors .. physicists .. mathematicians, like human calculators ... we would all likely have photographic memories .. we would all be amazing at EVERYTHING, in a similar way some autistic people appear to have amazing, almost super-human abilities, would likely just be natural to us all ...

a reply to: Segenam

i think the 10 % thing of the brain is in reference to reasoning, we use all our brain to control the body, the visual part of the brain is pretty big

originally posted by: Segenam
a reply to: SonOfTheLawOfOne

some believe we have been limited on purpose .. but thats another conspiracy for another thread .. but if we were able to tap into our own brains full potential .. then we would all be able to do what this man does .. and we would all be amazing artists .. and we would all be inventors .. physicists .. mathematicians, like human calculators ... we would all likely have photographic memories .. we would all be amazing at EVERYTHING, in a similar way some autistic people appear to have amazing, almost super-human abilities, would likely just be natural to us all ... ...

Savant's struggle with social interaction among other things. They are lost in a world that is simply not the same as ours. They see what we don't so what they find relevant isn't the same as what we would. If everyone was a savant we would all be lost in the wonders of our minds. If you ask me, (which you didn't ) I'd say its further proof that we are all in fact just a representation of God in a physical form allowing him to interact with itself. But because he's all knowing he has to block that knowledge from himself so designed this crazy complex scheme to make himself forget.......genius!

I see everything in pixels ... millions of tiny dots .. I have my whole life.
That's not a 'new genius' setting in ... it's a disorder of the eyeball.
ATS - Tiny Dots in the Air Where ever I look

But the rest with the math stuff ... pretty cool.
The price is high though .... PTSD and all that goes with it?
I'd rather not have the extra math skill and have a nice even keeled life.

So the world seems pixelated to him...? Interesting. Like a hologram? Or the matrix?

a reply to: FlyersFan

Do you see structure in anything or just random tiny dots?

I see Floaters as most people

a reply to: kosmicjack

I presume he sees the world as minecraft, he is Steve

a reply to: Indigent
The article uses the word "savant", which is probably more accurate than "genius", but it's interesting research.

The silver lining of brain injuries is that sometimes the responses to those teach us something about how the brain works.

But I agree, more often than not, the result of brain injury can be just unfortunate loss of mental function, with no superpower skills added.

a reply to: SonOfTheLawOfOne

Neuroplasticity.

a reply to: Indigent

I think Pythagoras was something like this. When you say "mathematical genius" you think about Einstein in front of a chalkboard. The reality is, Einstein was mathematically adept, but he was no genius.

The image "why e=mc2". That is an interesting title for an image. THink about the implications of someone understanding the underlying sublime geometry that gives rise to what we know as "rules of physics".

So what's that "WHY E= MC2" thing about? It looks as though he's using the flower of life to explain it.

a reply to: AfterInfinity

First time a saw that was after bfft say it, i just saw shinny drawings and though that was the math part of the article

Im pretty sure its gibberish

originally posted by: Indigent
a reply to: AfterInfinity

First time a saw that was after bfft say it, i just saw shinny drawings and though that was the math part of the article

Im pretty sure its gibberish

Gibberish? From a savant? Hmm.

originally posted by: Indigent
Do you see structure in anything or just random tiny dots?

Billions of dots ... like visual snow ... it's a defect in the eyes.
Some people say it's 'seeing air'. It gets worse with age.

I'd have to give a pass on this guy's gift. It comes with PTSD.
That's some evil stuff to have happen to you ...

a reply to: AfterInfinity

You could see him as a endless fountain of knowledge or you could see it as a drunk who got hit for not singing karaoke well and develop by accident the ability to draw pretty patterns and name them as he please.