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The tearing attack that turned a human being into a maths genius

A violent attack changed Jason Padgett's brain to such a degree that he began seeing the world in a completely different way (Credit: Getty)

Futon salesman Jason Padgett cared little near anything beyond partying and chasing girls, and then one fateful night inverse him forever.

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Jason Padgett sees maths everywhere. Even something as ordinary every bit brushing his teeth is governed by mathematics – he turns the tap on and dips his toothbrush into the water 16 times.

"I don't know why I like perfect squares," he says. "It's not just a perfect square, it'south ii to the power of iv or four squared just I just similar perfect squares… I automatically practise that stuff with everything."

Padgett is and then obsessed with maths and understands such complex concepts, he'due south been called a genius. He certainly has a rare talent for drawing repeating geometric patterns – known equally fractals – by paw.

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But the sometime daybed salesman from Alaska hasn't ever had a way with numbers. Simply nether 17 years ago he was living a very unlike life in Tacoma, Washington.

"I was very shallow," he laughs. "Life rotated around girls, partying, drinking, waking up with a hangover and then going out and chasing girls and going out to bars again."

Maths wasn't on his radar whatsoever.

"I used to say 'math is stupid, how can you utilize that in the real earth'? And I thought that was like a smart statement. I really believed it."

Simply on the night of Friday 13 September 2002 everything changed. (Read more than about why some people get sudden geniuses).

While out with friends, Padgett was attacked and robbed past two men outside a karaoke bar. They took his already torn leather jacket.

Padgett cared little about maths, instead focusing on having fun before the attack that changed the way his brain worked (Credit: Jason Padgett)

Padgett cared little about maths, instead focusing on having fun before the attack that changed the mode his brain worked (Credit: Jason Padgett)

"I heard as much as felt this deep, low-pitched thud as the first guy ran upwardly behind me and smashed me in the back of the head," he recalls. "And I saw this puff of white light just like someone took a picture. The next thing I knew I was on my knees and everything was spinning and I didn't know where I was or how I got at that place."

Padgett staggered to a hospital across the street where he was told he had concussion and a bleeding kidney cheers to a punch to the gut. "They gave me a shot of pain medication and sent me home," he remembers.

Only one time dwelling, Padgett's behaviour inverse apace and dramatically. He had sustained a traumatic brain injury, which can bring on obsessive compulsive disorder - OCD. In Jason'south case, he became increasingly afraid of the outside world and would only go out his business firm to stock upwardly on food.

"I just recall nailing blankets and towels over all the windows in the business firm… I remember actually using this spray cream and gluing the front door shut."

The OCD had made Padgett irrationally afraid of germs, which had a knock-on effect on his daughter who would come to stay with him amidst custody negotiations with his ex-partner.

"When she would come over I would obsessively wash my easily and clean," he says. "The very first matter I would desire to do is become her shoes off, get her into clean dress, wash her easily."

Simply while Padgett was experiencing all these negative consequences from his attack, something incredible was happening too. The way Jason was seeing things changed.

Following the violent assault, Padgett withdrew from the outside world and developed obsessive behaviours (Credit: Getty)

Following the fierce assail, Padgett withdrew from the outside world and developed obsessive behaviours (Credit: Getty)

"Everything that was curved looked like information technology was slightly pixelated," he explains. "Water coming downward the drain didn't look like information technology was a smooth, flowing thing anymore, it looked similar these little tangent lines."

The same thing happened with clouds, sunlight streaming betwixt trees and puddles. To Padgett, the earth essentially looked similar a retro video game. Seeing such a radically unlike view of his environment evoked alien emotions in Padgett. "I was surprised…confused. It was beautiful just it was also scary at the same time."

Because of these visions, Padgett began to think about huge questions in relation to mathematics and physics. Given his hermit-like being at that time, the net became a valuable source of data to him as he read extensively virtually mathematics online.

He stumbled across a webpage almost fractals which struck a chord with him. It's a hard mathematical concept which, put at its most bones, tin can be likened to a snowflake. When you zoom in, y'all will see it'southward made up of smaller snowflakes connected together, zoom in again and those snowflakes are fabricated of smaller snowflakes, and and then on until infinity.

Padgett was fascinated past this concept but didn't withal accept the words to describe it until one day his daughter asked him how the TV worked.

Since the attack Padgett has been able to draw repeating geometric patterns known as fractals by hand (Credit: Jason Padgett)

Since the attack Padgett has been able to draw repeating geometric patterns known as fractals by mitt (Credit: Jason Padgett)

"When you're looking at a Television receiver screen and y'all see a circumvolve information technology's really not a circle," he says. "It's made with rectangles or squares and, if you wait close, the border of the circumvolve is actually a zig zag. You lot tin can take those pixels and cut them in half and cut them in half and you lot go closer and closer to a perfect circle but you never actually attain one because you lot can keep cutting the pixels in one-half forever, so the resolution gets ameliorate just you never have a perfect circle."

Padgett felt compelled to explore this intriguing concept further. So, he began to describe. And he kept drawing.

"I had literally a m or more drawings of circles, fractals, every shape that I could manage to draw. Information technology was the only way I could manage to communicate effectively what I was seeing."

Padgett believed his drawings "held the key to the universe" and were so important that he needed to take them everywhere with him.

While on a rare trip out one day, he was approached past a man who had noticed Padgett with his drawings and told him they looked mathematical.

Jason Padgett had been a futon salesman before the violent attack that changed his life (Credit: Jason Padgett)

Jason Padgett had been a daybed salesman before the fierce set on that changed his life (Credit: Jason Padgett)

"I'thousand trying to depict the discrete structure of space fourth dimension based on Planck length (a tiny unit of measurement developed by physicist Max Planck) and quantum black holes," Padgett told him. It turned out the man was a physicist and recognised the high-level mathematics Padgett was cartoon. He urged him to take a maths class, which led Padgett to enrol in a community higher, where he began to learn the linguistic communication he needed to draw his obsession.

Afterwards three and a half years of living like a virtual hermit, going to school inverse everything for Padgett. He started to go psychological help for his OCD and even met the adult female who would become his wife.

But why was he seeing things in such a strange and different way? Why was his world now comprised of geometric shapes and graphs?

Poetically, it was idiot box that again provided him with a clue. Padgett saw a human, a then-chosen savant, who had extraordinary numerical abilities and talked about what numbers looked like to him.

A physicist who recognised the drawings that Padgett was producing set him on a new path by urging him to study mathematics (Credit: Jason Padgett)

"I would always depict that math was shapes not numbers and that was the first time I'd heard anybody merely me talk nigh what numbers looked similar," says Padgett.

He scoured the cyberspace for more information and came across Berit Brogaard, a cerebral neuroscientist at present at the Academy of Miami. The pair spent hours talking on the phone and from these conversations, Brogaard hypothesised that Padgett had synaesthesia – substantially a cross-wiring of the encephalon in which the senses get mixed upwards. (Detect out more about synaesthesia — and whether it can be learnt).

It is estimated to effect only effectually iv% of the population. Some synesthetes might see certain colours when they hear music or odor something that's not at that place when feeling a particular emotion.

The status is caused past connections between parts of the brain that are non in that location in other people. You tin be built-in this mode or some type of trauma, an injury, a stroke, an allergic reaction, can change the brain.

Brogaard believes the brain injury Padgett sustained acquired him to develop a class of synaesthesia where certain things triggered visions of mathematical formulas or geometric shapes, either in his mind or projected in front of him. She also hypothesised that synaesthesia made Padgett an acquired savant.

"Most of usa don't have that kind of insight considering we don't visualise mathematical formulas," says Brogaard.

Padgett developed a form of synaesthesia that gave him visions of mathematical formulas (Credit: Alamy)

Padgett adult a form of synaesthesia that gave him visions of mathematical formulas (Credit: Alamy)

To test these ideas, Brogaard brought Padgett to the Encephalon Research Unit of Aalto University in Helsinki, where he underwent a serial of brain scans.

While in the MRI scanner, hundreds of equations, including simulated ones, flashed on a screen in front of Padgett's eyes. The researchers then watched which parts of his brain lit upwardly in response.

"They institute that I had access to parts of the brain that nosotros don't have conscious admission to and also the visual cortex was working in conjunction with the role of the encephalon that does mathematics, which patently makes sense," says Padgett.

Brogaard'due south hypotheses turned out to be true. Padgett was formally diagnosed with acquired savant syndrome and a form of synaesthesia. Finally, he had answers.

Since his diagnosis, Padgett has published a book about his experience called Struck by Genius, he'south toured the world telling people his story and educating them nearly maths. He is aiming to help others who take had unique or rare/interesting lives by getting their stories published or made into movies. He even sells his drawings of fractals.

The ii men who attacked him that fateful September dark were never convicted despite Padgett identifying them and pressing charges.

His unique way of seeing the world has allowed Padgett to grapple with some of the most complex mathematical problems (Credit: Jason Padgett)

His unique manner of seeing the world has allowed Padgett to grapple with some of the most complex mathematical problems (Credit: Jason Padgett)

Years later, nevertheless, one of the men, Brady Simmons, wrote to Padgett to apologise while he was undergoing treatment for prescription drug addiction following a suicide attempt. In a sense, two lives were changed in the years that followed the attack.

"I'k a completely different person," says Simmons. "When I expect back the abysmal person that I was in the past, I just don't see how I existed on that level."

Padgett likewise feels like he is a unlike person than he was before.

"I see information technology [beauty] everywhere," he says. He is mesmerised past simple things that most people don't even notice such as raindrops falling on a puddle.

Through Padgett's eyes, the puddle is transformed into circuitous rippling patterns, overlapping and forming shapes like stars or snowflakes. And he wants everyone else to see what he sees.

"Yous should exist walking around in absolute anaesthesia at all times that reality even exists," he says. "I'm having this mathematical awakening and all around us is accented magic or about as close as you tin get to magic."

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