# Brain Trauma resulting in genius?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brain-trauma-resulting-in-genius/963759>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [May 1, 2022, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brain-trauma-resulting-in-genius/963759 "2022-05-01T15:16:57Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\
**Post date:** [May 2, 2022, 5:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brain-trauma-resulting-in-genius/963759/21 "2022-05-02T05:55:31Z")

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Got a link? Some people have reactions when they eat fava beans, with or without a nice Chianti, but I’ve never heard of it being this.

I also remember seeing a TV report about a man who was IIRC struck by lightning, and afterwards could remember each day’s weather report, but only from that day forward.

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**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\
**Post date:** [May 2, 2022, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brain-trauma-resulting-in-genius/963759/22 "2022-05-02T13:15:23Z")

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> [@nearwildheaven](#):
>
> I also remember seeing a TV report about a man who was IIRC struck by lightning, and afterwards could remember each day’s weather report, but only from that day forward.

Not that difficult if he lived in southern California.

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**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\
**Post date:** [May 2, 2022, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brain-trauma-resulting-in-genius/963759/23 "2022-05-02T14:20:45Z")

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I read somewhere that, in the case of autistic savant syndrome (“Rain Man”, being the prime pop culture example), it’s not that they are any more ‘genius’ than neurotypicals; it’s that normally a lot of brain power is devoted to the interpersonal communication we take for granted every day: things like understanding sarcasm, non-verbal cues, and ‘reading between the lines’ of conversations take a lot of processing power. In the case of people on the autism spectrum, sometimes that amount of brain matter typically devoted to interpersonal communication is dedicated to something else.

If that’s true, maybe something similar is going on with brain trauma: the damage is to certain pathways in the brain, but not to its overall capacity, and new pathways are formed that use the brain’s capacity for other things.

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**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2022, 11:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brain-trauma-resulting-in-genius/963759/24 "2022-05-03T11:02:38Z")

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> [@solost](#):
>
> I read somewhere that, in the case of autistic savant syndrome (“Rain Man”, being the prime pop culture example), it’s not that they are any more ‘genius’ than neurotypicals; it’s that normally a lot of brain power is devoted to the interpersonal communication we take for granted every day: things like understanding sarcasm, non-verbal cues, and ‘reading between the lines’ of conversations take a lot of processing power. In the case of people on the autism spectrum, sometimes that amount of brain matter typically devoted to interpersonal communication is dedicated to something else.

Yes, this is the kind of thing I was alluding to.  
People with autism also struggle with grouping or classification e.g. noticing that _this_ person is wearing the same hat and doing the same action as the _last_ person, as each instance seems unique to them.  
I might have misremembered this, but if this is the case, it might be part of why some autistics can perform feats like card counting, as each card looks like a new and unique thing to them.

Overall, not being able to group objects correctly is a severe problem, making many aspects of life more difficult. But the concept of “genius” doesn’t care about that. We only care about whether someone is capable of doing _one_ thing better than the vast majority of people.

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