Accidental genius - Tapping Your Inner Rain Man
From: Scientific American - 08/2014
By: Darold A. Treffert

A blow to the head can sometimes unmask hidden artistic or intellectual gifts

A 10-year-old boy, Orlando Serrell, knocked unconscious one day by a
baseball, discovered afterward that he could bring to mind the exact day of
the week for any date after the accident and could remember the weather for
each day since the trauma as well. He could also recall the most minute daily
events.

Darold Treffert, a physician who has studied savantism for many years, has
chronicled the ways that people with no artistic interest or talent can
suddenly develop a passion for painting or music after experiencing head
trauma or other types of brain insult.

In Brief:

  Rain Man, the movie starring Dustin Hoffman, brought to popular attention
  the existence of savant syndrome—in which people with autism display
  exceptional intellectual or artistic gifts from birth.

  Acquired savantism is an alternative form of the condition in which a
  person develops the ability to paint, play music or do mental calculations
  after experiencing some form of brain injury.

  An inner savant may exist in most people if the proper brain circuits are
  activated or switched off through electrical stimulation technologies or
  even through focused practice of a particular skill.

Read the abstract at:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/tapping-your-inner-rain-man/

Site license access to the article
http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v311/n2/full/scientificamerican0814-52.html

Link:
Instant Genius after Head Trauma (video 1:05:37)
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/instant-genius-after-head-trauma-video/