The Genuis

A man sees numbers in shapes making astronomical calculations in the blink of an eye. A woman see music in color. A child writes a symphony at ten years of age.

Individuals with savant syndrome characteristically excel in one of five categories: 

1. Music (most often piano performance)
2. Art (usually drawing and painting)
3. Calendar calculating (e.g., May 4, 1632, was a Friday)
4. Mathematics (e.g., computing prime numbers), and
5. Mechanical or spatial skills (e.g., map making).

A "typical" genuis would be someone who is born with a high IQ and uses thier skills over thier lifetime like Evangelos Katsioulis. Katsioulis is a 42-year-old Greek genuis, physician and psychiatrist. Katsioulis follows what's known as the genuis's path — which is a person driven by discovery. They aim to provide immediate solutions to global problems, making lives for us efficient and more comfortable. 

Daniel Tamment is another well-known genius. Tamment is capable of astronomical calculations in the blink of an eye. He's also a gifted linguist, speaking nine languages, including one he "created" called Manti. But Tammet is a bit different than Katsioulis when he says he "sees" numbers in a vivid way.

The numbers are moving in my mind," he says. "Sometimes they're fast, sometimes they're slow. Sometimes they're dark. Sometimes they're bright. That emotion, that motion, that texture will be highly memorable for me." In his mind, Tammet says, each positive integer up to 10,000 has its own unique shape, colour, texture and feel.

Seeing numbers in colors and shapes is a neurological phenomenon called synaethesia. Thier minds have a sensory reactions to math, music or words. For instance a a person might taste the words that others are speaking, see colors and shapes with numbers, or see colors with music. A neurological "cross-talk". A blending of sensations.

Another example is Melissa McCracken who is an artist and synaesthete who paints the music she sees. As heard through My Modern Met, her canvases exude the rhythmic and aural ecstasies of the music she listens to, like John Lennon. And then there are "virtuosos" who simply "know" music like Alma Deutscher. A British music prodigy who composed her own opera when she was 10 years old.

So —Katsioulis, Tamment, McCracken, and Deutscher were born with genius, but some people acquire "savant syndrome" from a brain injury like Jason Padgett. Jason Padget experienced synaesthesia after being hit in the head one night outside a karaoke bar. Shortly after his brain injury, Pagett began to see everything as fractals, and began to draw out his visions, and learned that what he was seeing were mathematical formulas. After the accident, he siad water looked like tangent lines and light became rays made up of lines and spirals. The images he began to correspond to geometry and physics concepts he had never studied. Before that, Padgett was an ordinary guy, selling furniture as a living, until he was brutally attacked and hit on the head.

There's also Orlando Serrell, who was struck in the head by a baseball and briefly knocked unconscious. After recovering, he discovered he could solve complex math problems in record time. Serrell suffers from brain damage, and although his mathematical ability was latent before the accident, his trauma turned him into a genius.

Acquired savants or accidental genius accounts have happened with not only brain surgery, but with epilepsy, sub-arachnoid haemorrhage, meningitis or even progressive aphasia. Additionally, there is a growing volume of literature that explores this phenomenon in previously healthy individuals diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease or frontal temporal dementia. 

There are many theories to explain the neurophysiology of acquired savant syndrome, but most of them agree on these two explanations:

Theory A. Injury results in a reorganization of the brain and its processing hubs, allowing areas containing musical, artistic, or mathematical memory to be readily accessed.

Theory B. Injury inhibits the higher cognitive functions (e.g., language, logic, comprehension) from suppressing natural creative abilities.

Genuis, synaesthesia, and acquired genius are interrelated paradoxes and a mystery. But science concludes only two explanations. I prefer to think there is a third conclusion because we are facing a bewildering mystery in the eye here. Is it possible that knowledge is perhaps in a world outside the individual? Have certain geniuses hit upon ideas, visions, and thoughts of unfathomable reality? Is it an awakening? A downpour of timeless knowledge? Science can not explain why an accidental bump on the head leads to genius, knowledge, and enlightenment, without dedicated effort or education. How is knowledge hidden in the brain if it was never learned? How is knowledge in the brain suppressed if it was never acquired to begin with?

Max Planck stated, "Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve."

Could it be that savant syndrome, from a brain injury like Jason Padgett or Serrell, is proof that consciousness does not exist in the brain? Could it be that your consciousness is not created by your brain, and not even located in your head? Noetic science is the study of human consciousness, but many don't believe it to be true. In fact theres heated skepticism about the study of consciousness. For instance, I quote a critic on Quora:

"Noetic science” is a superstition based on the idea that humans are so important that the universe will change just because we think about it. It’s basically wishful thinking dressed up in the language of pseudoscience.

It’s listed as pseudoscience by Quackwatch."

As you can see, consciousness is no simple matter, but how does science explain Jason Padgett? Or synaesthetes? What is the scientific argument? That somehow we're all mathematical geniuses if we're brain-injured? That we all have genius locked in our brains? It leads me to wonder if there is some higher plane of existence, and if so, can we change reality through our minds? Buddha pointed out over 2,000 years ago that meditation has the power to change our minds and change our lives. Could genius be a factor that proves the human mind is quantum? The jury is still out.