HeadBanger

“Edward Freytag doesn’t remember what happened on that sunny afternoon in July five years ago. But something — a deer, perhaps? — caused him to lose control of his motorcycle on a gentle mountain curve near Murfreesboro, Tenn. When one of his riding buddies found him 30 feet away from his bike, on the shoulder of the road, his mouth was packed with grass and dirt. He had fractured 11 bones. His helmet had a finger-size dent on the front-left side, and his brain had been badly bruised. When he woke up in the hospital, he was disoriented, experiencing short-term memory loss and having trouble finding words. But doctors told his wife, Joanna, that the prognosis was good. Edward, a 66-year-old middle school music teacher, would probably make a full recovery in three to six months. As his brain healed over the next six months, however, something remarkable happened, something that would land Edward in the annals of neuroscience case history.” NYT Mag (Gift Article): The Brain Injury That Made Edward Freytag a Musical Genius.