Maureen Seaberg

Maureen Seaberg is the coauthor of Struck By Genius: How a Brain Injury Made Me a Mathematical Marvel, the story of Jason Padgett, who acquired synesthesia and savant syndrome from a brain injury sustained in a brutal mugging fifteen years ago in Tacoma, Washington.

A polysynesthete, she has higher and lower synesthesias: her sensory experience of the letter K is teal, the number 8 aubergine, and she would have to become a glass artisan to describe what she sees when listening to Yo-Yo Ma. Her experience includes mirror touch synesthesia and as a result she is highly empathic and intuitive.

The native New Yorker also experiences the behaviors of functional tetrachromacy, or the presence of a fourth cone class for color vision. Vogue magazine called her "Girl With Kaleidoscope Eyes" in a feature in 2014. She tested positive on a DNA test for tetrachromacy and is awaiting functionality testing. She is honored to have inspired and served as the color consultant on MAC Cosmetics' hugely successful line of highly pigmented lipstick called "Liptensity".

Ms. Seaberg has presented on the senses at the Toward a Science of Consciousness conferences in Tucson and Stockholm, Yale Divinity School, the American Synesthesia Association conference at Vanderbilt University, Science Writers in New York (SWINY) and at Tibet House and NYU. She has written for the New York Times, National Geographic, Vogue, Glamour, O, the Oprah Magazine, ESPN the magazine, Huffington Post, The Daily Beast and has appeared on NPR, CNN's "Great Big Story", MSNBC, MTV News, TEDWeekends and PBS. She is at work on multiple book and screenplay projects. She is Mensa-qualified.