After the musician suffered a head injury in an accident, he began to “see” music and over the course of several months increased his creativity. This was reported by scientists from Vanderbilt University, who published a medical report in the journal. neurocase.
The 66-year-old actor taught music after retiring as a music artist and composer, the report said. In 2021 she was involved in a motorcycle accident that hurled her nine meters. He was taken to the hospital, where a CT scan showed blood pooling on the surface of his brain, a condition known as a subdural hematoma. The bleeding was not severe enough to require surgical treatment and he was discharged from the hospital three days later.
After the injury, the man had memory problems. Also, listening to music caused the man to see notes he had never experienced before, as if they were written on the sheet music. Tests by doctors also confirmed the patient’s words. He also said that his creativity was at its peak and that he felt compelled to compose music until late at night.
The man’s symptoms disappeared when he recovered from the wound about three months later. His doctors wrote in a report that the man’s traumatic brain injury (TBI) appeared to have given him synesthesia, a rare neurological condition that causes a “mixing” of emotions. For example, some people with synesthesia are born with certain colors or shapes when they hear certain sounds.
People have previously been reported to develop synesthesia or increased creativity after a traumatic brain injury, but the new case is one of the first to report both in the same patient, the authors write. This suggested that similar neurological pathways may be involved in the two conditions, they added.
The authors of the reports cautioned that they were unsure whether a man’s brain damage was causing his synesthesia and increased creativity.