Is there a latent genius lurking in all of us?

That’s one of the questions raised in the book Struck by Genius.

In 2002, Jason Padgett was a hard-partying, futon-slinging college dropout.

That all changed when he was savagely attacked outside a karaoke bar in Tacoma, Wash.

The hard knocks to his head left him with the ability to see the geometry in everything around him from that day forward.

Padgett suddenly saw shapes and angles everywhere in life, from fractals of water spiralling down a drain to arcs of light bouncing off a car window.

Without formal training to understand what he was seeing or expressing it to others (when he could stave off his post-traumatic stress disorder long enough to communicate with people), he took to drawing what he was seeing.

That included intricate drawings of his visual representation of pi, which helped him understand the infinite number that measures the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter.

What he saw was that circles are actually polygons with so many sides, they appear to be smooth to the human eye.

Doing his own research, Padgett determined he had synesthesia — a cognitive phenomenon wherein people perceive things using a blend of senses.

Stimulation in one cognitive pathway leads to involuntary experiences in another sensory pathway, resulting in a crossover of senses that varies from person to person.

Among the most common forms of this rare condition is grapheme-colour synesthesia, wherein people perceive letter and number characters as inherently coloured.

There are other forms of synesthesia where people associate shapes with sounds, sounds with colours, words with tastes, and numbers with points in space.

No two synesthetes are the same; every person experiences this phenomenon differently.

Padgett’s synesthesia came as a surprise benefit to him when he could suddenly grasp mathematical concepts through the visual representation he perceived in action all around him.

He went from being one of those kids in math class who asks, “When am I ever going to use this?” to being able to see it in use all around him, all the time.

His incredible journey took him from carefree adrenaline junkie to a member of the exclusive club of less than 50 people identified in the world with acquired savant syndrome.

There are many fascinating cases of brain damage seemingly unleashing amazing talents in people.

Take Derek Amato, the Coloradan who planned to show off to a friend by making a super cool football catch while diving into a shallow pool.

He miscalculated the diving distance and smashed his skull on the concrete bottom of the pool.

Four days later, he returned to the friend’s house to hang out in the friend’s makeshift music studio.

Amato was suddenly, inexplicably drawn to sit at an electric keyboard and began to play.

He had never had a music lesson in his life and couldn’t read music, but he didn’t just pound the keys.

For six hours, he played gorgeous, original music with challenging lyrical patterns that grew in volume, changed in tempo and harmonized under his 10 fingertips.

Afraid he’d lose this newfound ability if he stopped, Amato played until he finally left the friend’s house in the wee hours of the next morning.

Fellow Coloradan Alonzo Clemens suffered a severe head injury at age three. Shortly after his devastating fall, he began sculpting animals out of anything pliable with remarkable speed and accuracy. Today, his pieces can sell for thousands of dollars. Not bad for a half-hour’s work.

England’s Pip Taylor discovered she could draw beautiful and life-like pencil sketches after recovering from a concussion and bruising to her brain caused by tumbling down a flight of stairs.

Though these people gained remarkable talents after their brain injuries, acquired savant syndrome is believed to come with a tradeoff. In many cases, the more extreme the acquired talent, the more extreme the hurdles to overcome in order to use and understand that talent.

Padgett was virtually a different person after his attack than prior to.

He suffered PTSD and obsessive-compulsive disorder so extreme, he was housebound nearly 24 hours a day for four years, only sneaking out late at night or early in the morning to stock up on groceries. He went from mullet-sporting social butterfly to mathematics-obsessed recluse.

Clemons had to spend years re-learning how to talk, tie his shoes and dress himself, even though viewing a fleeting image of an animal gave him enough visual information to accurately represent it in a sculpture form.

Still, the profound ability of the brain to heal enough to thrive in specific areas — even if it’s weakened in other areas — is remarkable.

I like to think there’s genius capacity in all of us, even if it is well-hidden at times.