Name: How brain damage can trigger the genius in you | 60 Minutes Australia
Uploaded: 2026-03-27T23:03:30.000Z
Duration: 13 min 56 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

It sounds like the plot of a Hollywood movie.

Adverbs of manner

An ordinary bloke takes a blow to the head and then suddenly, incredibly, is transformed into a genius.

Well, you're about to meet three people who've gone through that experience in real life.

They've all suffered some kind of brain damage and survived to become gifted musicians, mathematicians, and artists.

and it could just hold the key to making us all a whole lot smarter.

Tony Ciccoria was 42, an orthopedic surgeon with no real interest in music, when a streak of genius came, literally, in a bolt from the blue.

I started having this incredible desire to hear classical piano music, which was a fairly large departure from anything I was interested in.

Tony Ciccoria's remarkable story began here at Sleepy Hollow Lake in Upstate New York.

It was during a family picnic that Tony decided he wanted to use a public telephone that used to be attached to this building.

Incredibly, just as he held the receiver up to his ear, a bolt of lightning struck the roof.

And I saw this big flash of light come out of the phone and hit me in the face.

And I remember it hit me right in the corner of the mouth,

and it just sent me flying backwards like a ragdoll.

Tony wasn't breathing and was unconscious until a passing nurse administered CPR.

But he remembers every moment because he watched it all happen.

I was having an out-of-body experience, and I saw myself on the ground.

And I remember when I saw the body there, I remember going I was surprised.

And if you think that experience is a bit on the strange side, what happened to Tony in the weeks that followed was even more extraordinary: developing an obsessional desire to hear and play classical music.

And I was so taken with it that I listened to it all day long.

And I came to the realization that I wanted to learn how to play.

It clearly was an obsession beyond anything I'd ever experienced.

I really felt like the only reason I had survived the lightning was had something to do with music.

Tony began piano lessons, getting up at 4:00 AM to practice.

One of just a tiny number of people in the world known as an acquired savant.

The acquired savant is, by definition, somebody who has had some sort of a central nervous system incident, and

then this dormant potential floods forth.

Their gifts range from the extraordinary sculptural skills of Alonzo Clemens.

Saw the shine of clear skies on August 17th, 1979.

To the total recall of dates and events, exemplified by Orlando Sorrell.

What years has Christmas Day fallen on a Saturday?

All acquired their sudden ability from a traumatic injury.

And after 50 years studying them, psychiatry professor Darryl Trefort believes we all have an untapped potential.

Within each of us does lie this dormant potential.

And if triggered, however triggered, it can come to the surface.

And it's what I call the little rainman within each of us.

There were 30 airline accidents, 211 were fatalities.

I think there is a little rainman within each of us.

The trick is to trigger that without some kind of a central nervous system incident.

The incident for Orlando Sorrell came when he was hit in the head by a baseball.

Right up in here, right up in this area where I was hit at.

How long after that did you realize that you had this amazing memory recall for dates and days?

Like a month later, like when September I got hit by a baseball August 17th, 1979, on a Friday.

Orlando was a 10-year-old street kid and joined this rare club of human specimens becoming an acquired savant.

In his case, he became a human calendar calculator.

Well, if somebody asks me, "December 3rd, '83, Saturday," I see that date.

You just see it in the front of your head?

If somebody asks me, "December 3rd, 1983," it's a Saturday, and it rained.

And we quickly realized he's not faking it.

We have a big horse race in Australia called the Melbourne Cup.

If we go back to 1993, the Melbourne Cup was held on November 2nd.

We have a football game in Australia called AFL, right?

So the AFL final was played in Australia last year on October 1st.