Hey Youtube, Jim here!
Welcome to Top 10 Archive!
Today’s topic reminds me of when you wake up from a nap with an incredible idea.
Like the problem that you just can’t solve until you dream about it.
For these ten people, it wasn’t a problem that was solved, but rather a switch that
got flipped.
There was a before, where they lived normal lives, and an after, when they were a genius.
What was the trigger?
Not a nap, but a serious brain injury.
Which is exactly the topic for today - the Top 10 People Who Gained Genius Powers After
Brain Injuries!
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10.
Derek Amato “No Diving” signs have a reason for existing.
It just so happens that when you dive into a pool that’s too shallow, you can seriously
injure your head piece.
You know what’s in your head?
That’s right, a brain.
In 2006, Derek Amato found out the hard way that pools don’t welcome your head very
nicely.
He blacked out and woke up disoriented.
He was left with hearing loss, chronic headaches and memory problems.
You know what else it left him with, though?
Musical genius.
First, he started seeing shapes; black and white shapes which he called a “continuous
stream of musical notation” in his head.
Then, he was suddenly able to sit and play intricate pieces of music at the piano, at
which he had never been particularly talented.
Now, he’s grateful for the change in his life, but I’m sure he’s also much more
careful when swimming.
9.
Jason Padgett Back in 2002, Jason Padgett, a furniture salesman,
was attacked by two muggers.
He was kicked repeatedly in the head during the attack, which caused him to see a blinding
white flash.
Not long after, he woke up disoriented lying on the concrete.
He had a severe concussion and his vision was impaired mildly.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t see, but rather that now every object was broken down into
shapes and lines.
Before this, Padgett had never been a genius by anyone’s standards.
In fact, he dropped out of high school.
So someone else had to inform him that what he was seeing was mathematical formulas represented
geometrically.
He could, essentially, turn numbers into pictures in his brain.
Since then, he enrolled in college to learn more about his condition and understand his
own brain better.
8.
Jon Sarkin If you’d met Jon Sarkin in his “before”
life you’d describe him as a regular Joe Shmoe... or...
Jon Shmon?
He played golf, he was a chiropractor, he was married with a kid, he read about stocks.
Let’s face it, Jon was boring.
Then one day, golf changed his life.
Who else in the entire world can say that?
In 1988, he got a brain bleed during a game of golf and was taken to the hospital.
His situation was so dire that the doctors had to remove a portion of his brain.
The man who woke up wasn’t John Shmon, the chiro, it was Jon the artist.
He had this sudden compulsion to paint, following a series of dreams he described as surreal,
and he quit his job to pursue painting and sculpting full time.
Soon, his brain injury and his art got him in the news and he got the push he needed
to become a serious artist.
He’s now been featured in galleries internationally.
7.
Leigh Erceg With a name like Leigh Erceg, it must have
been very disappointing to have a life that was very mundane.
This might be why, at 49 years old, her own brain made her something extraordinary, worthy
of carrying a name that epic.
In 2009, she fell into a ravine on her ranch in Colorado and suffered both head and spine
injuries.
A less lucky person would have just been limited to a wheelchair for the rest of their lives.
However, her spine healed just fine.
Sure, she had no idea who she was and had no memories of anything that had happened
before the fall, but with this she also had an even more interesting result.
She lost her emotions.
She rationally knows when to smile or laugh, but doesn’t quite understand why she does
it.
She now does art, drawing images based on mathematical equations.
It’s really quite amazing, though a little sad.
What would you prefer, your lifelong memories or a new genius brain?
6.
Mr. Z Mr. Z is clearly an anonymous name for a young
boy who suffered brain damage.
He was nine years old at the time and he was shot in the forehead during a home invasion.
Not your regular head injury, like being dropped by a careless relative.
The bullet went through his head completely, leaving no remains behind and left him paralyzed
and mute.
He couldn’t do a lot of things, but one thing that he started doing was particularly
interesting.
He could take anything apart and put it back together.
He could also remember random facts perfectly.
Things like street names in areas he’d only been to once became clear as day.
These little quirks didn’t dim the impact that his disabilities had on the rest of his
life, either.
5.
Franco Magnani Our next genius was an Italian immigrant who,
in the 1960’s, started suffering from a strange illness.
He suffered fevers that got so bad that he was driven to delirium.
He had these dreams of his life in Italy, where he hadn’t lived in almost 10 years.
He would wake up and paint these scenes from his childhood.
Little did he know, his paintings were perfect replicas of the village where he grew up.
His brain stored the images for years and the fevers had shaken them out.
Doctors say it’s a type of epilepsy, each seizure allowing him to remember every detail
of those memories.
Two decades later, a photographer took it upon himself to photograph those same scenes
that Magnani had painted.
4.
Anthony Cicoria Dr. Anthony Cicoria was no high school dropout
before his injury, but the “after” is just as shocking.
He was using a payphone and saw a bright light that stunned him.
He felt as if he had been knocked out of his own body.
He says he remembers looking down at his own unconscious self and seeing people rush to
try to resuscitate him.
Then he came back into his own body feeling all the physical pain of what had happened.
It wasn’t a car that hit him, like you’d guess.
It was lightning.
His recovery took a few months, but he never quite felt the same after that.
He didn’t have as much the focus he used to, his memory wasn’t very good.
But then, his problems were solved and he was back to his old self.
Then, he started feeling a desire to make music.
He became obsessed, hearing music in his dreams, feeling music all the time.
He didn’t know how to play music, though, so he didn’t know how to get the music out
of his head.
So, he took up self-teaching.
The obsession became so intense that his wife left him.
He became gifted at music, doctors think, because of a temporal-lobe seizure caused
by the lightning.
The brain is a crazy thing!
3.
Heather Thompson Heather suffered her head injury in the most
mundane way.
This could actually happen to any of us.
She was loading groceries into her car and the hatch hit her in the head.
The impact was so strong that she was knocked to the ground.
Her doctors weren’t particularly concerned, calling it a “mild traumatic brain injury”.
Heather was adamant that she just didn’t feel like herself after that, though.
She was photosensitive, all lights and colors seemed too bright and vivid, so she had to
lock herself up in her dark bedroom to find refuge.
She couldn’t spend time with her family or even go to her job as CEO of her own business.
She was easily exhausted, and spent most of her time sleeping.
A neighbor dropped by some art supplies and it turned into her saving grace!
It wasn’t all fun though, it ended in divorce, moving to the countryside, getting a goat,
and turning into a painter.
In the end, after all of the struggles, she’s happier than ever.
2.
Orlando Serrell Orlando Serrell is the go-to for a lot of
people wanting to make a point about genius acquired after brain injuries.
He was hit on the head with a bat as a boy back in 1979.
He got up and brushed himself off, not realizing his life had changed forever.
After that, in addition to the headaches, he also had a perfect memory.
He knew everything that had happened to him every moment in his life.
This is called an “eidetic memory” of the past.
With this shiny new eidetic memory he also gained the ability to know the future!
Well, not the actual events of the future, but rather what day of the week a date would
be, even for dates hundreds of years into the future.
That genius 10-year-old has long ago grown up and he’s helped researchers study links
between brain damage and human intelligence.
1.
Jim Carollo Jim Carollo was just 14 years old when he
lost his mother in a car crash.
He was in the car when it happened and he fell into a coma himself.
His injuries could have been fatal and doctors thought he didn’t stand much of a chance.
Still, he survived, and with good reason!
He not only went back to his life as a teenager in school, but also became a math genius.
He passed all of his math exams with flying colors, skipped up to calculus, aced without
studying, and so on and so forth.
He memorized numbers by just looking at them.
Jim is now 39 and his abilities are intact.
He isn’t a crazy Harvard professor or anything, but he lives a normal life, and says the numbers
are calming to him.