This is a fascinating post from Natural News:

“Scientists say that genius brain function can indeed be spontaneously unleashed in people without any obvious cause. They’ve seen cases where people have had a sudden and spontaneous “epiphany” moment where they suddenly understood the intricacies of math, art, or music. These “sudden geniuses” had no underlying disability and therefore are not considered to have congenital or acquired savant syndrome.

For example, a woman suddenly noticed that she was perceiving the world around her differently when she was in her mid 40s. When looking at flowers or trees, she started seeing textures, shadows and colors in ways that she previously hadn’t and felt the strong compulsion to express this new vision on paper. She immediately bought some pastel pencils and got to work, drawing a rich and eerily realistic gorilla that shocked her family and friends given her past disinterest in art and lack of aptitude for it. In fact, she had never taken an art class in her life!”

I wouldn’t mind that happening. I spent eight hours studying Mandarin Chinese yesterday – it would be nice to have a quick jump to fluency.