Savant Syndrome: After a bar fight, a man suddenly becomes a math genius

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Today, Jason Padgett is a math genius. His world consists of geometric patterns. He is one of the few people in the world who can draw images of so-called fractals. These are very special graphic structures.

At first nothing looked like mathematical talent. The American dropped out of college. He later described himself as a “loafer” with zero interest in an academic career. He only came into contact with numbers when he counted the hours he still had to work in his father’s furniture store before he could move around the houses again.

Caning Attack changes his life – Padgett becomes a math genius

That changed on September 13, 2002. In a karaoke bar, two men attacked him from behind and hit him on the back of the head. He fell to the ground. The men continued to beat him. Trampled him. Only when he gave the attackers his leather jacket did they let him go. Padgett was taken to the hospital and discharged the same night. The diagnosis: severe concussion and a kidney injury.

But the beatings had changed something else in his mind. “The next morning, I stood in my bathroom and stared at the running water that came out of the faucet,” Padgett describes in his book the moment he realized something was different. Suddenly he saw certain patterns in everything and was even fascinated by the water lines, which, as he says, “flowed perpendicularly out of the tap”.

Padgett became obsessed with every shape in his house—the squares of the windows, the curve of a spoon. He stopped working and started reading everything he could get his hands on about mathematics and physics. When he saw a beam of light break off a car window, it clicked. “I realized each of the rays is a representation of the number pi.”

He started painting. The structures of a snowflake, the veins on a leaf. These are so-called fractals, as Padgett later found out. Fractals are structures that, when viewed differently on different scales, always reveal the same basic shapes. For some he needed several days, for others even weeks. “They just had to be perfect.”

Only 100 people worldwide – that’s behind Savant Syndrome

With his ability, Padgett is one of only 100 people worldwide with “Savant Syndrome”. When he saw a BBC documentary on the subject, he knew: “This is it. That’s what happened to me.”

Savant-Syndrom or insular talent describes the phenomenon that people have an extraordinary talent in a special area. Savants (“knowers” in French) do not forget. They can recite phone books by heart, draw city maps from memory and imitate piano concerts spontaneously. They often have an intellectual disability or a developmental disability. For example, the intelligence quotient of many savants is below 70, well below the average. But it is above average in their special area, their island.

The autistic Alonzo Clemons was able to form perfect animal sculptures with his hands even as a small child. At the same time, he is unable to eat independently or tie his shoes.

Or the blind and mentally handicapped Leslie Lemke. At the age of 14 she suddenly played Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto Number One on the piano in the middle of the night. Without ever having had piano lessons. She had heard the piece as background music on television.

However, there are also savants with a normal or above-average IQ.

Considered common talents of savants

Photographic memory Perfect hearing Exceptional long-term memory Mathematical talent Fast language learning Musical talent

The exact cause is still unclear

The exact cause is still not clear. However, it is known that

especially people with autism (half of all savants are on the autistic spectrum) and more men than women (seven out of eight savants are male)

have this ability. There is much debate about the causes. For example, the left brain, or the connection between the left and right brain, appears to be damaged in most savants. Neurobiologists assume that the right side of the brain tries to compensate for the deficits in the left side. Brain researchers suspect testosterone poisoning during embryonic development as the cause of the damage. Boys produce more testosterone in the womb than girls. If too much of it is produced, this overdose can damage the young brain tissue.

Another possible explanation is an error in the filtering system of the brain. To protect against overload, the brain normally filters all incoming information. So people can only access really important things. This helps him not to drown in the daily flood of data. Parts of this filter will probably not work with Savants. Everything they see, hear or read is equally important to them. You don’t forget anything and can therefore retrieve an enormous amount of facts.

Savant syndrome due to neurological disease or accident

Savant syndrome is congenital in most cases. However, the insular gift can also be the result of a neurological disease or injury and thus appear later in life. Padgett is an example of this. Or Orlando Serrell, who got hit in the head by a baseball at the age of ten and has since remembered every detail of every single day.

In California, scientists at Crafton Hills College reported a young boy who was disabled and deaf and deaf after a gunshot wound to his left temple, but who was suddenly able to construct complicated technical devices.

Savants should act out talent – ​​also as therapy

American psychiatrist Darold Schlagt has been researching savants for more than 40 years. The late expert knew most of them personally. He said savants had to live their talent. Juggling numbers, drawing or playing the piano are as important to her as the air she breathes.

Hits had found that savants who use their skills not only become more social and are better integrated, but also improve their language skills. So it makes sense to encourage their talent. For them it is a kind of therapy.

Is there a savant in all of us?

Hits also saw great potential in research. Savants would know things they never learned. From where? And what kind of potential is there in all of us? How can we retrieve it without having a heart attack or a blow to the head? There are (still) no answers to these questions.

But is that even desirable? In any case, math genius Padgett’s life has changed drastically. He has developed a panic fear of germs and is therefore constantly washing his hands. He studied briefly, but broke it off again because he said he ran out of money. Today he gives Ted Talks and sells his artwork. Does he want his old life back? “No,” he says. But sometimes he misses the innocent ignorance of life.