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How a Brain Injury Made Me a Mathematical Marvel
by Jason Padgett and Maureen Seaberg
No one sees the world as Jason Padgett does. Water pours from the faucet in crystalline patterns, numbers call to mind distinct geometric shapes, and intricate fractal patterns emerge from the movement of tree branches, revealing the intrinsic mathematical designs hidden in the objects around us.
Yet Padgett wasn't born this way. Twelve years ago, he had never made it past pre-algebra. But a violent mugging forever altered the way his brain works, giving him unique gifts. His ability to understand math and physics skyrocketed, and he developed the astonishing ability to draw the complex geometric shapes he saw everywhere. His stunning, mathematically precise artwork illustrates his intuitive understanding of complex mathematics.
The first documented case of acquired savant syndrome with mathematical synesthesia, Padgett is a medical marvel. Struck by Genius recounts how he overcame huge setbacks and embraced his new mind. Along the way he fell in love, found joy in numbers, and spent plenty of time having his head examined. Like Born on a Blue Day and My Stroke of Insight, his singular story reveals the wondrous potential of the human brain.
"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" - Publishers Weekly
"Padgett's heartfelt story of learning to cope with his new faculties, the onset of OCD that accompanied them, the intensive clinical testing and research that continue today, and how his experience changed his life,will appeal to fans of the films Rain Man and A Beautiful Mind, as well as the works of Oliver Sacks." - Library Journal
"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." - Richard E. Cytowic, neurologist and coauthor 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." - Darold A. Treffert, M.D., author of Islands of Genius: The Bountiful Mind of the Autistic, Acquired and Sudden Savant
This information about Struck by Genius was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Jason Padgett is an aspiring number theorist and mathematician with acquired savant syndrome and synesthesia. He is currently the manager of three futon stores in Tacoma, Washington. His art, drawings of the grids and fractals he sees synesthetically, won Best International Newcomer in the (A)BOMB Art Basel of Miami Beach competition. Struck by Genius is his first book.
Maureen Seaberg is an author with several forms of synesthesia and is an expert synesthesia blogger for Psychology Today. She has written for numerous publications, including The New York Times; The Daily Beast; The Huffington Post; O, The Oprah Magazine; and ESPN: The Magazine. She has appeared on MSNBC, PBS and The Lisa Oz Show on Oprah Radio. A native New Yorker, she currently resides in the city.
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