The 31-year-old father-of-one was a college dropout who had never had any interest in academic pursuits. Instead he spent most of his spare time drinking and participating in adrenaline fueled activities such as cliff-jumping and sky-diving.
This would all change however when one night in 2002 he had been at a bar when two men attacked him from behind and knocked him unconscious with a blow to the back of the head.
Following a CT scan Padgett was released from hospital the same night, but the next day he realized that something was different. He started to see and perceive shapes and movements in everyday objects and became obsessed with fractals and mathematics.
As it transpired, Padgett is one of only 40 known people in the world to have "acquired savant syndrome", a condition in which trauma to the head results in the emergence of remarkable talent in maths, art or music.
"I believe I am living proof that these powers lie dormant in all of us," he said. "If it could happen to me, it could happen to anyone."
Life in technicolor: After being knocked unconscious at a local bar, Padgett woke up the next morning to find he noticed life in more detail than before. Now he draws what he sees and sells his pictures as art
Padgett writes about the life-altering experience in his new memoir out Tuesday, 'Struck by Genius: How a Brain Injury Made Me a Mathematical Marvel'.
It all started the night of September 13, 2002 when Padgett went out to a karaoke bar near his home and was mugged.
A beautiful mind: Padgett writes about the life-altering experience of becoming a savant in his memoir 'Struck by Genius', which hits book stores Tuesday
Two men attacked him from behind and punched him in the back of the head, knocking him unconscious.
At the hospital, he was treated for a bruised kidney but released the same night.
The next morning, Padgett woke up and found that his vision had changed to include details he never noticed before.
He started the tap in his bathroom and noticed 'lines emanating out perpendicularly from the flow.'
'At first, I was startled and worried for myself, but it was so beautiful that I just stood in my slippers and stared,' Padgett told the New York Post.
Padgett stopped going to work and spent all of his time studying math and physics, focusing on fractals, which are repeated geometric patterns.
Even though he showed no talent for art before, he started drawing fractals in extreme detail - sometimes taking weeks to finish the work.
But there was also a downside to his new talents. While he was once outgoing, Padgett turned introverted and started to spend all of his time at home, covering up his windows with blankets and refusing visitors.
He became obsessed with germs and would wash his hands until they were red, and wouldn't even hug his own daughter until she washed her hands as well.
Padgett thought he was going crazy, but hope came after watching a BBC documentary on Daniel Tammet, an autistic savant.
Back to school: Padgett re-enrolled in college after the brain injury. Pictured above with his wife
But how did it get this way? How did the brain know to specialize after an injury?
Theories involving neuroplasticity, or the ability of the brain to make new connections, abound.
Brogaard hypothesizes that the trauma of the event flooded the brain with neurotransmitters, which ultimately changed its structure.
Treffert believes that the structural changes allow Padgett to tap into his “genetic memory” — the same kind of instinctual memory that guides birds to fly in a “V” formation — freeing up areas that are inhibited in healthy brains.
“It shows us that ordinary people have untapped abilities,” says Brogaard. This sentiment is one that every researcher interviewed by The Post repeated.
In a series of studies at the University of Sydney in Australia, people wearing a “thinking cap,” a device that immobilizes parts of the brain, were able to draw in greater detail and complexity, find mistakes in written language, solve complex puzzles and more accurately guess the number of objects in a large sample size.
But these advances happen only while wearing the cap and fade an hour later.
It’s enough for author Allan Snyder to conclude, “Savant skills are latent in all of us.”
The truth is we know very little about our 3-pound organs, says Dr. V.S. Ramachandran, director of the Center of Brain and Cognition at the University of California, San Diego.
“All the progress and advances we’ve made in neuroscience over the years, yet we know precious little of higher brain functions. These anomalies, as scientists call them, show the depth of our ignorance,” he says.
But do we even want to know? Would we be happier as savants?
Asked whether Padgett would go back to his old life if he could, he responded:
“No.”
Then, after a pause, he added, “though sometimes I do miss the blissful ignorance of life before.”
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