Brain and Body

These 10 People Became Instant Geniuses After Brain Injuries Unlocked Their Hidden Talents

March 21, 2016 | Johannes Van Zijl

Brain scan
Photo credit: Eric Lewis/flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

They suddenly developed remarkable skills!

For a long time people were not sure precisely how horses galloped. Do all of the horse’s hooves leave the ground at once, or does one hoof always remain planted on the ground? It wasn’t until British photographer Eadweard Muybridge, who took a series of photographs of a horse mid-stride in the 1880s, that the question was finally answered.

The Horse in Motion

Muybridge's "The Horse in Motion" (Wikipedia Commons)

Muybridge was obsessed with capturing photographs with great detail, especially moving bodies. The photo series, known as “The horse in motion,” made Muybridge famous because it resolved the long-debated question of how horses gallop.

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It was believed that Muybridge’s obsessive and eccentric behavior towards detail was due to a head injury he sustained in a severe stagecoach accident some years earlier. Now, researchers believe that the crash, which left Muybridge with a permanent brain injury, may actually have been responsible for his artistic brilliance.

Muybridge might have been what psychiatrists call an “acquired savanta form of savant syndrome that results when an individual acquires prodigious capabilities and skills after suffering from a head injury.

It might sound strange, but Muybridge is just one of numerous other people who have developed artistic, musical, and mathematical abilities after suffering from a brain injury.

In the video by geobeats, they explore the lives of 10 other individuals whose brain injuries unlocked their hidden talents.

 

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