Read Struck by Genius: How a Brain Injury Made Me a Mathematical Marvel for Free Online Page B

harm. In addition, there were injuries right down to the cellular level.
    Scientists now know that when the brain ricochets inside the skull, it can stretch or even tear the myelin sheaths that protect axons. It’s the same mechanism that causes whiplash in a car accident. In an accident, the head jerks forward and then back, overstretching or tearing the muscles and ligaments in the neck. I suffered a kind of brain whiplash, overstretching the delicate structures inside my head, an injury that can kill neurons or damage them so badly they are no longer able to communicate.
    Despite the shock of what had happened and of my new perceptions, I was filled with intense curiosity and began researching on the Internet other cases of concussions and TBI. I immersed myself in the stories of what happened to other people in my situation. I wasn’t sure why I now had such an aptitude for research. And for the first time, my interests didn’t lie in thrills or the rush of my social life. Was this some temporary side effect of the beating I took? Unfortunately, I didn’t have the money for the medical testing necessary to get more answers. This isolation also had another layer: I was now afraid to leave the house.
    What I learned from my personal research painted a stunning picture of what happened to my brain the night I was attacked. I knew it was tragic, but it was also fascinating at every turn. In some ways, it was like passing a terrible accident on the road. I was afraid to look and at the same time unable to turn away.
    I was seeing the most bizarre things. When I extended my hand and then withdrew it, it was like watching a slow-motion film. I saw an image on the television of light glistening on a lake, and it was as though the light points also emanated from the screen—they grew larger than the actual image. I was obsessed with every shape in my house, from the rectangles of the windows to the curvature of a spoon. The house itself seemed to fall away as a whole and become just a collection of shapes. The sudden importance of geometry—whether in the environment or in my visions—felt at once invasive and awe-inspiring.
    I realized there must have been some misfiring going on because there were physical symptoms. It began a day or so after the mugging: I was lying in bed, and my right foot started to vibrate. It felt like someone had laid a violin or a small guitar on top of my foot and started strumming it. The vibrations went over the top of my foot like waves of different tones; I could feel the change in frequency in my skin and deep in my muscles. It was almost as though I could hear the notes the imaginary instrument was playing because the depths and vibrations varied as though they were music, like the way it feels at a very loud live music event, only much deeper in my musculature. It continued for longer than any song; it was more like an entire symphony. Several weeks later, I became so worried about this that I left the safety of my house and went to the doctor. I was sent for a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan one Friday, and the neurologist who ordered the test told me my symptoms might be due to multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, among other disorders, and he’d have the results on Monday. I spent the weekend frantic that something would show up to confirm I had one of these devastating illnesses.
    On Monday, a nurse from the doctor’s office phoned and said the MRI showed no evidence of any of these diseases. She said it was likely that the twitches and tremors, which had also started to affect my arms and my legs and even my tongue, were a result of the concussion I’d suffered during the mugging. She couldn’t say how long they might last, but she did say they could stop at any time and were not considered dangerous. The condition was called benign fasciculation syndrome, a fancy name for involuntary muscle tics. These twitches can happen in any skeletal