14 DAY TRIAL // Here is a piece of news about a medical condition some people who don't know any better might like to be diagnosed with: a man by the name Jason Padgett is suffering from what the scientific community calls the savant syndrome, and he has a brain injury he sustained while being attacked to thank for it.
In a book called “Struck by Genius,” the man explains that, although the attack he suffered while outside a karaoke bar also caused him to develop obsessive-compulsive and post-traumatic stress disorder, he very much likes his newly acquired mathematical abilities.
“It's so good, I can't even describe it,” former furniture salesman Jason Padgett from Tacoma, Washington, told the press in a recent interview, as cited by Live Science.
According to specialist Berit Brogaard with the University of Miami in Florida, US, documented cases of acquired savant syndrome are few and far in between. Thus, medical literature has until now described just 15-25 occurrences of this medical condition.
In Jason Padgett's case, the brain injury that he suffered after two men jumped him caused him to see the world in an entirely new way, i.e. as having a precise mathematical and geometrical structure.
What's more, the former furniture salesman is now able to piece together fairly complex geometric shapes and sees mathematical formulas as geometric figures, a trait that researchers call synesthesia.
Specialists who have had the chance to examine Jason Padgett's brain with the help of functional magnetic resonance imaging and transcranial magnetic stimulation explain that his brain's left hemisphere is surprisingly active.
Given the fact that this part of the brain has been shown to be in charge of mathematical skills, this piece of information is by no means of little importance, researchers explain.
Besides, Jason's Padgett's parietal cortex, which integrates information from various senses, the temporal lobe, which helps with visual memory, emotion, and sensory processing, and his frontal lobe, which deals with planning, attention, and execution are also quite active.
For the time being, specialists are unable to say if the man's mathematical skills are here to stay or might disappear in time. However, they say that, provided that these abilities originate from structural changes in the brain, chances are that Jason Padgett will forever remain a math genius.
Interestingly enough, there is evidence to suggest that, given the right circumstances and environmental conditions, pretty much everyone could develop their mathematical skills to the extent that former furniture salesman and present-day college student Jason Padgett has.