Fascinating account of how a brain injury made the world mathematically beautiful.

[pnwmom]

Sometimes brain injuries can unleash previously hidden abilities. This man recovered with an extraordinary ability to visualize math in the world around him.

http://www.salon.com/2014/04/20/the_brain_injury_that_made_me_a_math_genius/

If you could see the world through my eyes, you would know how perfect it is, how much order runs through it, and how much structure is hidden in its tiniest parts. We’re so often victims of things—I see the violence too, the disease, the poverty stretching far and wide—but the universe itself and everything we can touch and all that we are is made of the most beautiful geometric patterns imaginable. I know because they’re right in front of me. Because of a traumatic brain injury, the result of a brutal physical attack, I’ve been able to see these patterns for over a decade. This change in my perception was really a change in my brain function, the result of the injury and the extraordinary and mostly positive way my brain healed. All of a sudden, the patterns were just . . . there, and I realize now that my injury was a rare gift. I’m lucky to have survived, but for me, the real miracle—what really saved me—was being introduced to and almost overwhelmed by the mathematical grace of the universe.

* * *

There’s a park in my town of Tacoma, Washington, that I like to walk through in the mornings before work. I see the trees that line its path as anyone would, the branches and the bark, but I see a geometrical blueprint laid on top of them too. I see triangular patterns emerging from the leaves, reminding me of the Pythagorean theorem, as if it’s unfolding in the air, proving to me over and over again what the ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras deduced thousands of years ago: the sum of the squares of the legs of a right triangle (a triangle in which one angle is a right angle, or 90 degrees) equals the square of its hypotenuse. I don’t need a calculator to know that the simple formula most of us learned in school—a2 + b2 = c2—is true; I can see it instantly in the trees all around me. To me, a tree is more than its geometry, but geometry is also far more than most people realize. I think it’s everything.

I remember reading that Galileo Galilei, the Italian astronomer, mathematician, and physicist (and one of my heroes), said that we cannot understand the universe until we have learned its language. Speaking of the universe, he said, “It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it.”

This rings true for me. I see this hidden language of the world before my eyes.

SNIP

_________________________

A link to a few of his fractal drawings:

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2012/04/27/real-beautiful-mind-accidental-genius-draws-complex-math-formulas-photos/

[secondvariety]

1. Reading

his book is on my list.

[pnwmom]

4. Mine, too!

[AverageJoe90]

2. In all honesty, the more I think about it, and the more studying I do, it seems more and more.......

possible that the brain may actually be not the originator, but perhaps maybe something like a transmitter or *tuner* for consciousness, kinda like how a radio(or an antenna for a TV, back in the day) works. Of course, if this really is the case(and interestingly enough, more and more independent studies are leaning away from the traditionalist view), I'm afraid it will probably take mainstream science many years to accept it(this held true for the debunking of eugenics, btw). But honestly, can simple basic chemistry really fully explain such a profound change in this man's consciousness? Or is there indeed something more to it?

[ms liberty]

3. An interesting idea to ponder; thanks! n/t

[TuxedoKat]

5. Sounds like a form of synesthesia

and a wonderful one at that. I'm going to read his book now.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130730101744.htm

Oh, well here you go, he calls it synesthesia himself.

I've always wondered if there was a way to train your brain to experience synesthesia. One time I had one but it was very fleeting, so I think it could be possible but it would probably take a lot of work.

[Helen Borg]

6. I have no doubt that he is happy and feels inspired... Good for him.

However, I have serious doubts that any of that translates into real insights such as being able to prove theorems and all the activities mathematicians engage in. For example, this is from his piece: "Now, with one quick glance at human anatomy, I see clearly that veins, arteries, and even the strands of DNA are fractals too." Guys, that's not news at a... Mandelbrot wrote about this, lots of natural phenomena follow fractal patterns, that's how he go the idea in the first place. This is in the popular culture nowadays, anyone who has read a popular book on fractals knows that and can see that in pictures. Anyway, I'm skeptical.

[pnwmom]

7. Here's more about him. Researchers say he is a savant.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2012/04/27/real-beautiful-mind-accidental-genius-draws-complex-math-formulas-photos/

Much like the mathematician John Nash, played by Russell Crowe in the 2001 film, “A Beautiful Mind,” researchers believe Padgett has a remarkable gift. To better understand how his brain works, Berit Brogaard, a neuroscientist and philosophy professor at the Center for Neurodynamics at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, and her team flew Padgett to Finland to run a series of tests.

A scan of Padgett’s brain showed damage that was forcing his brain to overcompensate in certain areas that most people don’t have access to, Brogaard explained. The result was Padgett was now an acquired savant, meaning brilliant in a specific area.

“Savant syndrome is the development of a particular skill, that can be mathematical, spatial, or autistic, that develop to an extreme degree that sort of makes a person super human,” Brogaard said.

____________________

And some of the images he has drawn:

http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/jason-padgett.html

His is currently studying how all fractals arise from limits and how E=MC2 is itself a fractal. When he first started drawing he had no traditional math training and could only draw what he saw as math. Eventually a physicist saw his drawings and helped him get traditional mathematics training to be able to describe in equations the complex geometry of his drawings. He is currently a student studying mathematics in Washington state where he is learning traditional mathematics so he can better describe what he sees in a more traditional form. Many of the captions were written before he had any traditional math training. His drawing of E=MC^2 is based on the structure of space time at the quantum level and is based on the concept that there is a physical limit to observation which is the Planck length and the geometry of Hawking Radiation at the quantum level. It shows how at the smallest level, the structure of space time is a fractal.