Tommy McHugh (1949 – 19 September 2012) was a British artist and poet. In his early life, McHugh was a builder and was also involved in youth crimes. When he was 51, he suffered a stroke on both sides of his brain that resulted in two burst blood vessels. He was sent into a coma for a week and acquired savant syndrome.
Injury
McHugh attempted to evacuate his bowels quickly due to a knock on the toilet door. The sudden pressure led to an artery being severed on his
frontal
Front may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Films
* ''The Front'' (1943 film), a 1943 Soviet drama film
* ''The Front'', 1976 film
Music
*The Front (band), an American rock band signed to Columbia Records and active in the 1980s and ea ...
and
temporal lobes, causing him to haemorrhage.
While relearning after his stroke, he began to write poetry to express everything he was experiencing. He also experienced an identity crisis which was most likely the motivation for his artistic outputs.
As an attempt to figure out the cause of his sudden personality change, McHugh wrote to and worked with two neuroscientists:
Alice Flaherty
Alice Weaver Flaherty is an American neurologist. She is a researcher, physician, educator and author of the 2004 book ''The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain'', about the neural basis of creativity.
Ea ...
from
Harvard Medical School
Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the graduate medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is one of the oldest medical schools in the United States and is consi ...
and Mark Lythgoe from
University College London
, mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward
, established =
, type = Public research university
, endowment = £143 million (2020)
, budget = ...
. A paper has been published about their discoveries.
Death
McHugh died in 2012 from cancer.
Before his death, McHugh said that his strokes "have given
im11 years of a magnificent adventure that nobody could have expected."
References
External links
* http://www.tommymchugh.co.uk
{{DEFAULTSORT:McHugh, Tommy
1949 births
2012 deaths
Deaths from cancer in England