How One Brain Injury Resulted in an Extraordinary Gift

British photographer Eadweard Muybridge was obsessive and eccentric. He also may have been what psychiatrics refer to as an acquired savant — a person with extraordinary talent who wasn’t born that way and didn’t acquire his skills later in life. Muybridge’s erratic behavior was blamed on a head injury he sustained in a serious stagecoach accident that killed one passenger and wounded others.

Today, researchers believe that the crash, which gave Muybridge a permanent brain injury, may be partially responsible for bestowing upon him an artistic brilliance. Muybridge is credited with having settled the debate over how horses gallop with a series of photographs he took of a horse in midstride back in the 1880s. The images made him famous. For more information, click here to read the full release.