Waking Up A Genius

It’s the stuff of science fiction novels but occasionally unexplainable things happen and it blows people’s minds.

That’s exactly what has happened to Jason Padgett. A young, unruly, spiky-haired teen working in a futon shop back in 2002, he frequented a karaoke bar before leaving to head home. Unfortunately, he was stopped in his tracks by a young gang who beat him senseless, causing severe head injuries. Admitted to hospital he was then released and sent home having suffered a serious concussion as well as internal bleeding. He went to bed the night he returned home but when he woke up, everything had changed.

Jason woke up to a new world. He saw his surroundings in a completely different manner, seeing mathematical shapes and tangents wherever he looked, none of which he had ever seen or even imagined before his accident. The world had become a series of mathematical formulae and instead of the smooth water coming out of the tap, he saw the inner workings and mechanics behind the phenomenon. This is visually demonstrated beautifully in a short 12-minute documentary here. It’s fascinating and the scientists give you a simplified insight into how something like this could have happened.

This isn’t the first time that something seemingly unexplainable and out of a fantasy novel has happened. Reuben Nsemoh, a 16-year-old from Georgia, woke up from a coma fluent in Spanish having never spoken a word of it before his accident. Firstly, this would have been excellent news for my Spanish degree, secondly, how on earth did this happen? Well, scientists and doctors say that severe head impacts can affect the areas of the brain that deal with language and so can alter the make-up of a person’s brain, of course very unpredictably.

So, the bad news for all you wannabe-linguists out there, this isn’t going to be a sure-fire way of gaining fluency overnight. However, it does feel like something out of science fiction and it’s nice to hear horrific accidents can, occasionally, have a happy ending.