10/11/2023 0 Comments Brain edu math![]() (Synesthesia is a phenomenon in which one sense bleeds into another.) Padgett's remarkable abilities garnered the interest of neuroscientists who wanted to understand how he developed them.īerit Brogaard, a philosophy professor now at the University of Miami, in Coral Gables, Florida, and her colleagues scanned Padgett's brain with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to understand how he acquired his savant skills and the synesthesia that allows him to perceive mathematical formulas as geometric figures. Now Padgett is a sophomore in college and an aspiring number theorist. One day, a physicist spotted him making these drawings in a mall, and urged him to pursue mathematical training. Padgett dislikes the concept of infinity, because he sees every shape as a finite construction of smaller and smaller units that approach what physicists refer to as the Planck length, thought to be the shortest measurable length.Īfter his injury, Padgett was drawing complex geometric shapes, but he didn't have the formal training to understand the equations they represented. There's no such thing as a perfect circle, he said, which he knows because he can always see the edges of a polygon that approximates the circle. He started sketching circles made of overlapping triangles, which helped him understand the concept of pi, the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. With Padgett's new vision came an astounding mathematical drawing ability. "I see this image in my mind's eye, now in 3-D, every time imagine how my hand moves through space-time." (Image credit: Credit: Courtesy of Jason Padgett) In addition, "everything has a pixilated look," he said. He describes his vision as "discrete picture frames with a line connecting them, but still at real speed." If you think of vision as the brain taking pictures all the time and smoothing them into a video, it's as though Padgett sees the frames without the smoothing. But at the same time, he noticed that everything looked different. ![]() Soon after the attack, Padgett suffered from PTSD and debilitating social anxiety. Later that night, doctors diagnosed Padgett with a severe concussion and a bleeding kidney, and sent him home with pain medications, he said. Two guys started beating him, kicking him in the head as he tried to fight back. Padgett recalls being knocked out for a split second and seeing a bright flash of light. "I cheated on everything, and I never cracked a book," he said.īut all that would change the night of his attack. He hadn't progressed beyond than pre-algebra in his math studies. Before the injury, Padgett was a self-described jock and partyer.
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