Man gets mugged, transforms into mathematical savant?

[gravenewworld]

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/...al-genius-draws-complex-math-formulas-photos/Don't know if he really is a genius at math now, but at least he can draw some cool pictures. So who wants to hit me on the head?

 

[Dickfore]

:Laughs out loudly:

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Pi, that infinite number that begins with 3.14.

The author of that article is no judge of mathematical genius.

 

[Dickfore]

The authors of that article are no judges of mathematical genius.

Fix'd.

 

[HallsofIvy]

Aha, more evidence for my "two by four about the head and shoulders" method of teaching!

 

[Dembadon]

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/...al-genius-draws-complex-math-formulas-photos/Don't know if he really is a genius at math now, but at least he can draw some cool pictures. So who wants to hit me on the head?

Articles like that grieve me. I think he has a promising career in graphic design, but I saw nothing in that article which justifies the use of the word "genius" to describe his mathematical ability. I'm really not trying to be pretentious here, I just don't like it when the media bastardizes math and science to make a story.

EDIT:

... some call a mathematical genius of unprecedented proportions.

Are you effing kidding me?! Riiiiiight: Euler, Gauss, Euclid, Riemann, Newton, etc. don't have anything on this guy!

I have officially moved from grief to complete disgust.

 

[ThomasT]

There didn't seem to be anything in the article to support the claim that the guy is a math genius. Such as, eg., some math.

I don't know, but I don't think one has to be a math genius to do the sort of pictures that the guy has done. They are nice though.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Articles like that grieve me. I think he has a promising career in graphic design, but I saw nothing in that article which justifies the use of the word "genius" to describe his mathematical ability. I'm really not trying to be pretentious here, I just don't like it when the media bastardizes math and science to make a story.

EDIT:
Are you effing kidding me?! Riiiiiight: Euler, Gauss, Euclid, Riemann, Newton, etc. don't have anything on this guy!

I have officially moved from grief to complete disgust.

You're right.

The story here, what is authentically of interest, is that his brain trauma completely changed his personality, narrowing his focus from the standard general range of interests to a dedicated obsession with geometric looking patterns. He virtually went from a normal person to something indistinguishable from a high functioning autistic savant. This is the first time I've ever heard of this happening, and the particular brain damage he suffered should be thoroughly studied for what it may have to say about autism.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

You're right.

The story here, what is authentically of interest, is that his brain trauma completely changed his personality, narrowing his focus from the standard general range of interests to a dedicated obsession with geometric looking patterns. He virtually went from a normal person to something indistinguishable from a high functioning autistic savant. This is the first time I've ever heard of this happening, and the particular brain damage he suffered should be thoroughly studied for what it may have to say about autism.

There is no connection between brain damage and autism. The criteria for a diagnosis of autism can be found here:
DSM-IV

 

[zoobyshoe]

There is no connection between brain damage and autism. The criteria for a diagnosis of autism can be found here:
DSM-IV

The criteria for the diagnosis is a separate consideration from the cause. The DSM declines to ascribe a cause. That's true of just about every diagnosis in the DSM except those involving drug abuse. There is, however, a vast amount of research, past and present, trying to uncover the cause. The fact this man's brain damage has rendered him so much like an autistic savant is definitely of interest in what it may say about autism.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

The criteria for the diagnosis is a separate consideration from the cause. The DSM declines to ascribe a cause. That's true of just about every diagnosis in the DSM except those involving drug abuse. There is, however, a vast amount of research, past and present, trying to uncover the cause. The fact this man's brain damage has rendered him so much like an autistic savant is definitely of interest in what it may say about autism.

Besides monomania, what other criteria does he exhibit?

 

[zoobyshoe]

Besides monomania, what other criteria does he exhibit?

Monomania?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomania

I'm not sure where you are getting your terminology.

The one thing he acquired from the brain damage is remarkably like what you find in high functioning autistic savants.

I don't know for sure, but it doesn't seem to me he continues to fit the description of someone who only cares about 1.) working out, and 2.) partying. In other words, while they don't specifically ask about this, he does not seem to be social in the same way he was before at all. Drawing these designs seems to be the center of his life now. They depict him doing it even when he's at work, and he's even got an exhibit of his stuff on the wall behind him at the furniture store. My impression: he's there because he needs a job, not because he likes selling furniture (i.e. interacting socially with the customers).

To the extent a screening by an autism specialist might uncover more distinctly autistic traits, so much the better for my notion, but my main point is that he should be studied based on the one major change alone. (They are, in fact, studying him, but seem to be barking up this erroneous tree of "math genius", instead of asking what his case may have to say about high functioning autistic savants.)

 

[apeiron]

The fact this man's brain damage has rendered him so much like an autistic savant is definitely of interest in what it may say about autism.

Did you see the claim is that he actually has an acquired synesthesia that causes him to have a reaction to fractal formula?

Here is his account of the maths he is reacting to...

Remembering back to algebra we learned that you can graph any equation. So if you take a basic function say f(x)= 2x + 1 and graph it you translate the points onto a graph and make a line. If x=0 then y=1, if x=1 then y=3 etc. We are doing the same thing with fractals only we are translating the ENTIRE SHAPE instead of just a point.

http://www.fantastic-fractals.com/Make-a-Fractal.html

I can see why they are calling him a mathematical genius.

The whole thing is way over-hyped. Here is a different account which says his immediate reaction to the brain injury was a distorted vision of the world that looked fractal. Then later he learned to retrofit some mathematical justification to the simple patterns he was obsessively drawing.

So it is dubious that it is even true synesthesia.

At the hospital they told him he had a concussion, and to get some rest. But when Padgett went back home, he immediately went on the longest drugless acid trip of all freaking time. On sunny days, the little bit of light that bounced off a car's window would suddenly explode into an array of triangles. Every time an object moved, it left strange patterns behind. The edges of clouds and liquids became spiraling lines. The dude thought he was either going crazy or being haunted by the ghost of geometry. Either way, he stayed mostly inside his house for three freaking years.

...Padgett decided he'd go ahead and start drawing the shapes he saw.

...someone who saw his art noticed that the drawings looked kind of mathy, so they suggested that Padgett take math classes at the community college so he could learn how to describe them.

http://www.cracked.com/article_19504_6-people-who-gained-amazing-skills-from-brain-injuries.html

And then back into the wild hype...

Padgett...is widely acknowledged as the only person able to hand-draw fractals (for a tidy profit, of course!). He also has advanced the fields of math and physics with his intuitive understanding of those weird repeating shapes. He even discovered that Einstein's E=mc² is a fractal.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Then later he learned to retrofit some mathematical justification to the simple patterns he was obsessively drawing.

I like the way you put this. It's clear the vague allusions to pythagorean theorem and pi and fractals are a poor attempt at rationalizing what he's doing. It's obvious on the first reading of the OP's link he did not acquire mathematical genius, or even above average math skills. All he's seems to have acquired is an obsession with drawing geometric patterns, which is quite a different proposition than doing and understanding geometry.

 

[Dickfore]

I used to do these kinds of drawings in my 6th grade geometry class, as well as my Computer Science in QBasic :)
[/PLAIN]
Spirograph, anyone?

 

[zoobyshoe]

I used to do these kinds of drawings in my 6th grade geometry class, as well as my Computer Science in QBasic :)
[/PLAIN]
Spirograph, anyone?

Yeah. A few years ago I taught myself how to tie a Turk's Head knot:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turk's_head_knot

I'm sure it represents something mathematical, but I have no particular interest in it if it does. It looks cool, is all.

 

[apeiron]

I like the way you put this. It's clear the vague allusions to pythagorean theorem and pi and fractals are a poor attempt at rationalizing what he's doing. It's obvious on the first reading of the OP's link he did not acquire mathematical genius, or even above average math skills. All he's seems to have acquired is an obsession with drawing geometric patterns, which is quite a different proposition than doing and understanding geometry.

Digging into it a bit more, I see he is also tied in with this lot...
http://www.consciousness.arizona.edu/WorkshopSynesthesia2012.htm

So a lot of bad science behind the bad journalism.

Here is Padgett describing his symptoms first hand in a short clip...


His description of trailing and jitter effects are not synesthesia at all in my book. More the kind of visual disturbances that you get from brain damage that results in integrative failures in the visual hierarchy. Or Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder (HPPD).

There is a wiki page claiming that brain scans show he only reacts to actual fractal equations, but I've not been able to track down the papers as yet, so that looks like unpublished stuff. And given the other information, I would still be dubious.

However, giving the case for the other side (because whatever the explanation, it is interesting the spin that is getting put on all of this)...

In a series of functional MRI studies in Finland, Brogaard's team found uni-lateral left-side activity in parietal and frontal areas when Padgett was exposed to the mathematical formulas that give rise to synesthetic fractals in him and bi-lateral activation when he was exposed to non-sense formulas or formulas that don't give rise to synesthetic fractals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berit_Brogaard

And here is a clip which suggests the test stimuli were actual objects rather than equations. Possibly this was just a different experiment, but it does give yet more first-hand accounts of what Padgett experiences, and ties it to motion processing issues.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Digging into it a bit more, I see he is also tied in with this lot...
http://www.consciousness.arizona.edu/WorkshopSynesthesia2012.htm

So a lot of bad science behind the bad journalism.

Yes.

Here is Padgett describing his symptoms first hand in a short clip...


His description of trailing and jitter effects are not synesthesia at all in my book. More the kind of visual disturbances that you get from brain damage that results in integrative failures in the visual hierarchy. Or Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder (HPPD).

A guy I know here, who's been diagnosed as somewhere on the autistic spectrum, described this same difficulty with following the motion of cars or busses to me. He said nothing about a grid, but he said things to the effect that, to him, cars jerk forward in space rather than progress with continuous motion. He mentioned this several times in several different conversations, so I take it it was quite intrusive. He complained that he can't read the signs on the sides of busses when they are in motion because he can't visually track them. No one else I have met who has Asperger's has mentioned this (though none of them seems to have ever had a driver's license).

Sacks mentioned a woman whose visual field would freeze and stick due to the sight of certain motions. Pouring tea was one trigger. The scene would stop moving and become a still frame of tea coming out of the pot into the cup, and she'd be stuck there a while. That's not synesthesia, and this jerky motion effect sounds like a quick succession of shorter lived episodes of it.

There is a wiki page claiming that brain scans show he only reacts to actual fractal equations, but I've not been able to track down the papers as yet, so that looks like unpublished stuff. And given the other information, I would still be dubious.

However, giving the case for the other side (because whatever the explanation, it is interesting the spin that is getting put on all of this)...

And here is a clip which suggests the test stimuli were actual objects rather than equations. Possibly this was just a different experiment, but it does give yet more first-hand accounts of what Padgett experiences, and ties it to motion processing issues.

The only synesthetic sounding thing here: In the last video he says the sound of the MRI made him see wavy lines, but only, "in my head". That's ambiguous, and I wouldn't assume synesthesia from it.

If the sight of the formula for a fractal causes him to see the pattern of a fractal, I still wouldn't call that synesthesia, just hallucination. I wouldn't call him a savant either, unless they've conclusively determined that the image he sees is the one that would, in fact, be generated by the formula they showed him.

I have an inkling he may only be seeing "form constants". Hallucinogenic drugs, and many other things that affect the brain cause people to see geometric patterns that a guy named Kluver dubbed "form constants". (Migraine aurae are another well known cause of this.) :

It is believed that the reason why these form constants appear has to do with the way the visual system is organized, and in particular in the mapping between patterns on the retina and the columnar organization of primary visual cortex. Concentric circles in the retina are mapped into parallel lines in visual cortex. Spirals, tunnels, lattices and cobwebs map into lines in different directions. This means that if activation spreads in straight lines within the visual cortex, the experience is equivalent to looking at actual form constants.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_constant

I suspect this guy may be seeing form constants but was mislead into believing they were fractals. Now he leans in that direction by confirmation bias and "fractalizes" his reports of what he sees, justifying it with the phrase he repeated often in the last video: "Everything's a fractal."

The Danish researcher strikes me as being synesthesia-happy, much like Richard Cytowic, who seems to see synesthesia everywhere (and came up with the statistic of 1 in 10 people having some form of synesthesia).

Anyway, since he's been tainted with the notion he's some kind of mathematical genius now, and that's been linked to fractals, it may not be possible any longer to determine whether or not all he's been experiencing are form constants. He may have trained himself to visually conflate them with all the images of fractals he's now seen on the web.

 

[apeiron]

A guy I know here, who's been diagnosed as somewhere on the autistic spectrum, described this same difficulty with following the motion of cars or busses to me.

I thought this was quite a common symptom - and one that fits with autism being a low-level integration issue.

Donna Williams described her perceptual issues well in her autobiography, which you would enjoy - http://www.donnawilliams.net/about.0.html

Sacks mentioned a woman whose visual field would freeze and stick due to the sight of certain motions. Pouring tea was one trigger.

Yep, that was a very memorable example for me too. Loved those books of his.

If the sight of the formula for a fractal causes him to see the pattern of a fractal, I still wouldn't call that synesthesia, just hallucination. I wouldn't call him a savant either, unless they've conclusively determined that the image he sees is the one that would, in fact, be generated by the formula they showed him.

I'm still digging because this is the sort of sloppy neuroscience that really annoys me.

Brogaard has written this account which gives a far clearer story on how Padgett is only drawing pictures inspired by his visual disturbances. So the maths is retrofitted.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0GEjtSycjTKNmUzYjgyMjctOWFjNC00N2Q1LThlMzUtNTk0MzM3YzAyODU3/edit

But then here she is claiming that Padgett is responding selectively to fractal formulae (with a full paper in preparation).

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1b1ndhaV3CV-GNnjbBQjBy_Ro-EkF-ensdaaMDdyzCgo/edit#

Maybe Padgett has learned to recognise these formula having done some introductory maths classes now.

I have an inkling he may only be seeing "form constants". Hallucinogenic drugs, and many other things that affect the brain cause people to see geometric patterns that a guy named Kluver dubbed "form constants". (Migraine aurae are another well known cause of this.)

Yes, it sounds very much like the kind of things reported with migraine auras.

Though rather than form constants, Brogaard at least cites the kind of boundary and motion perception distortions that can result from targetted brain damage.

One region that stands out as a possible target area for JP’s lesion is the lateral occipital complex (LOC). Lateral occipital complex is the lateral-posterior area of the occipital lobe (visual cortex), just abutting the posterior area of the motion-sensitive area MT/V5. LOC shows preferential activation to images of objects, compared to a wide range of texture patterns (Malach 1995, Grill-Spector et al. 1998, Wong et al. 2009, Pourtois et al. 2009). As LOC generates the same response for objects regardless of their shape, it may be considered an intermediate link in the chain of processing stages leading to object recognition in visual cortex.

LOC is also known as ‘visual memory’. It is responsible for object persistence for a few seconds after the stimuli was been removed (Wong et al. 2009) and is involved in rotation-invariant shape processing (Silvanto et al. 2010). As JP does not see object boundaries as smooth and invariant over time, it is possible that the assault in 2002 caused injury to LOC.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0GEjtSycjTKNmUzYjgyMjctOWFjNC00N2Q1LThlMzUtNTk0MzM3YzAyODU3/edit

And you've probably seen this useful classification of visual disturbances...

http://www.migraine-aura.org/content/e27891/e27265/e26585/e48971/e48980/index_en.html

Padgett may even have a spot of entomopia - insect vision - from his mention of grid-like repetition - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entomopia

 

[zoobyshoe]

I thought this was quite a common symptom - and one that fits with autism being a low-level integration issue.

Donna Williams described her perceptual issues well in her autobiography, which you would enjoy - http://www.donnawilliams.net/about.0.html

It may well be common, but I haven't heard it specifically described by anyone except the one guy I met. Donna Williams doesn't specifically describe anything like this in the above link, and I don't recall Temple Grandin mentioning anything like it in Sack's writings about her.

Yes, it sounds very much like the kind of things reported with migraine auras.

Though rather than form constants, Brogaard at least cites the kind of boundary and motion perception distortions that can result from targetted brain damage.

And you've probably seen this useful classification of visual disturbances...

http://www.migraine-aura.org/content/e27891/e27265/e26585/e48971/e48980/index_en.html

When I say he might just be seeing form constants, I'm not talking about the jerky motion disturbance, which is a separate problem. I'm talking about the geometric patterns that he sees and tries to draw.

At the Migraine link, one sufferer submitted an image he created of his visual aura:

http://www.migraine-aura.org/content/e27891/e27265/e26585/e49268/e49334/index_en.html

Have a look. It strikes me as a superimposition of two form constants. I think Padgett is probably experiencing something like this, but more elaborate, triggered by light glinting off surfaces. Depending on the exact form constants involved you could get something more suggestive of a fractal, without it actually being a fractal.

The puff articles don't mention this, but the first paper you linked to reports that he has developed marked OCD symptoms as a result of the head trauma. That goes a long way toward explaining the personality change, his obsession with these drawings, and the sudden resemblance to someone with HFA. OCD is often co-morbid with Autism and Asperger's. That is really the thing I was wondering about, and what I would study in this woman's shoes. Synesthesia and math savantism are barking up the wrong tree. The math, as you pointed out, has been artificially retrofitted.

 

[apeiron]

It may well be common, but I haven't heard it specifically described by anyone except the one guy I met. Donna Williams doesn't specifically describe anything like this in the above link, and I don't recall Temple Grandin mentioning anything like it in Sack's writings about her.

It is an important issue because many developmental mental syndromes - autism, schizophrenia, synaesthesia, dyslexia, etc - seem more likely to have a hodological explanation. The basic problem is one of low level, fine-grain, integration across cortical areas rather than some kind of localised or modular defect. Like as suggested for instance in the Theory of Mind module explanation of autism.

The sensory disturbances in autism do not sound like Padgett's though - which do seem more like a focal injury to a particular part of the visual hierarchy. In autism, the problem looks a general one of volume and contrast control - integrating all the incoming information into a predictable sensory scene.

...bestselling autistic author, Donna Williams, in her book Like Colour To The Blind wrote about her experience of tinted lenses (Irlen filters) after being diagnosed with scotopic sensitivity. In this book she described the lenses as enabling her to have cohesive, unfragmented vision, able to see faces, bodies and objects as a whole for the first time and reducing the extremity of experiences such as meaning-blindness, face blindness, inability to learn to read facial expression and body language and the social consequences of these impairments. This led to a worldwide raised awareness of scotopic sensitivity as a sensory perceptual problem common in many (but not all) people with autism and expanded awareness of the potential effects of Scotopic Sensitivity far beyond that of reading disability, also leading to awareness of the effects of fluorescent lighting on those with this perceptual disorder.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotopic_sensitivity_syndrome

...individuals with autism. The accounts of remarkable people like Temple Grandin, Donna Williams, Jim Sinclair, Darren White, Sean Barron, Thomas McKean, Georgina Stehli...Some of the most fascinating insights are the descriptions of sensory perception. Almost every first-hand account has described some distortion of one or more of the sensory channels to the brain - seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, or feeling. These individuals describe in detail distortions in both extremes of hyper- and hypo-sensitivity which often fluctuated, alternated and changed over time. Temple Grandin's book Emergence: Labelled Autistic, (1986) recounted her sensitivity to touch:...

http://dragonflytoys.com/specialneeds/universalaccess/resources/articles/browsedetail/usa/Article/All/1/174/0

The first classification of sensory dysfunction in autism was introduced by Carl Delacato (1974) who suggested that each sensory channel could be hyper-, hypo-, or “white noise” (interference within the system). Concerning vision, hyper- means that too much sensation comes to the brain through eyes; hypo- means, not enough sensation gets into the brain, while “white noise” occurs when the eyes are “directed inside” (Delacato, 1974).

http://www.google.co.nz/url?sa=t&rc...yNnhBA&usg=AFQjCNFVDE4blJdVKJNmaYfhCUNxPNsSMQ

When I say he might just be seeing form constants, I'm not talking about the jerky motion disturbance, which is a separate problem. I'm talking about the geometric patterns that he sees and tries to draw.

At the Migraine link, one sufferer submitted an image he created of his visual aura..Have a look. It strikes me as a superimposition of two form constants.

It could be that. Form constants are visual disturbances focused in the lower visual hierarchy - V1 and V2.

 

[ThomasT]

Not to disrupt the flow of the discussion, which is interesting, but as an aside, are the images that Padgett is drawing actually fractals?

 

[apeiron]

Not to disrupt the flow of the discussion, which is interesting, but as an aside, are the images that Padgett is drawing actually fractals?

Not by any strict definition I would say. They are not scale invariant - zoom in and you don't continue to see exactly the same thing.

What he seems to mean by fractal is he draws some basic unit - like a pentagon inside a circle divided up by right triangles. Then repeats. There is no scale change in the exercise. Though you do then get a messy intersection pattern because of the overlap.

That is why it would be interesting to see the "fractal equations" Brogaard claims to have used in her brain scan experiment. So far, the whole maths slant looks bogus.

Again, Padgett gives a description of his process here...
http://www.fantastic-fractals.com/Make-a-Fractal.html

 

[ThomasT]

Not by any strict definition I would say. They are not scale invariant - zoom in and you don't continue to see exactly the same thing.

What he seems to mean by fractal is he draws some basic unit - like a pentagon inside a circle divided up by right triangles. Then repeats. There is no scale change in the exercise. Though you do then get a messy intersection pattern because of the overlap.

Ok, that's what I'm seeing. As far as I can tell Padgett's drawings are not graphing fractal sets.

That is why it would be interesting to see the "fractal equations" Brogaard claims to have used in her brain scan experiment.

Interesting, and essential, considering the claims.

So far, the whole maths slant looks bogus.

So far ... I agree.

This is a hand drawn fractal of the structure of space time at the quantum level (Planck length/Planck Particle size frame). It shows a time lapse film of a mathematical savant, Jason Padgett, hand draw the fractal. Color was added by computer and wave equations make his drawing vibrate. The equation describes the geometric connection between the quantum energy (very small, hw) and the the energy described by Einstein's famous E=mc^2.

Maybe I'm just too ignorant. But, this doesn't make any sense to me.

Jason Padgett discovered how fractals arise from relativity and limits.

Is that what fractals arise from? I don't know. Just asking.

 

[apeiron]

Maybe I'm just too ignorant. But, this doesn't make any sense to me.

Is that what fractals arise from? I don't know. Just asking.

No need to take this seriously at all. You can see the whole story as a very neat bit of cultural myth making. Brain-damaged nobody becomes scientific/artistic genius. Padgett is at least probably enjoying the fame and the cash.

The art world does this all the time. I once even got paid handsomely to write up a blurb on the science of memory for some guy's exhibition catalogue. He was a proper artist doing good stuff. But it was just marketing - adding a bit of scientific gloss to make the work seem deeper.

You can see other examples of Padgett's drawings that look more self-consciously fractal...

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/-quantum-tree-jason-padgett.html

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/quantum-nautilus-spotlight-jason-padgett.html

 

[ThomasT]

No need to take this seriously at all. You can see the whole story as a very neat bit of cultural myth making. Brain-damaged nobody becomes scientific/artistic genius. Padgett is at least probably enjoying the fame and the cash.

The art world does this all the time. I once even got paid handsomely to write up a blurb on the science of memory for some guy's exhibition catalogue. He was a proper artist doing good stuff. But it was just marketing - adding a bit of scientific gloss to make the work seem deeper.

You can see other examples of Padgett's drawings that look more self-consciously fractal...

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/-quantum-tree-jason-padgett.html

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/quantum-nautilus-spotlight-jason-padgett.html

Thanks for the replies. Now back to your more interesting discussion regarding what changes might have happened to Padgett's brain via his injury, and how that might have affected his behavior.

 

[zoobyshoe]

The sensory disturbances in autism do not sound like Padgett's though...

This is what I'm also saying about the guy I know whose visual disturbance (cars moving forward with a "jerky motion") sounds like Padgett's: I haven't run across anyone else on the autistic spectrum who reports this particular distortion. Therefore, I was surprised to hear you say you thought it was common. Apparently you didn't realize I was only referring to the jerky motion distortion.

It could be that. Form constants are visual disturbances focused in the lower visual hierarchy - V1 and V2.

I would suspect form constants first, because they are so widely reported and many different things can cause them.

As I said, though, interviewing him now, now that he's convinced they are fractals, might not be fruitful in determining if they are merely form constants because he's been so primed to interpret them as fractals, or representations of pi and such.

Here are form constants in their skeletal form:

http://www.miqel.com/images_1/entheogens/form-constant-mental-pattern.jpg

The actual experience can, apparently, be as vivid as the paintings of Alex grey:

http://www.google.com/search?tbm=is...33.9.9.0.0.0.0.70.560.9.9.0...0.0.buEslFZ0WL8

who, in addition to working in a morgue, took a lot of LSD:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/03/24/findrelig.DTL&ao=all

I've never taken the stuff myself, nor seen a form constant, so I can't say for sure, but the reports of people who've seen them are such that they seem to be overwhelming. Padgett did stay inside for three years after he started seeing his "fractals".

It would be easy, for example, to see something like this:

http://trip-dealer.org/images/products/nicht-zugeordnet/Alex-Grey%20Dying-500.jpg

and suppose it was a fractal instead of a form constant.