Savant syndrome and autism, I think, are not disorders of brain structure, but they're disorders of brain function.

We can't use the word normal anymore because it's sort of come to be politically incorrect, because normal implies a classification, and categorizations, and exclusions, and so forth. So neurotypical is the word that we now have to use for what I call normal behavior. Neurotypical behaviors are those kinds of behaviors within the range of usual human conduct that do not rise to the level of a disorder.

Savant syndrome, characteristically, consists of left hemisphere dysfunction coupled with right hemisphere emergence, and what you see in the savant are basically right brain skills.

There are some cases that have come to my attention where there's been a head injury, or getting struck by lightning and surviving, with really no disability or residual. So there are cases that I'm aware of where there's been some incident which triggered the acquired savant ability, but is not associated with long term disability, so that can occur. But I think that's probably the exception rather than the rule in that I think many of the acquired savants do end up with some residual disability.

Originally when we talked about language disorder it was a catastrophic language disorder. It's substantial, and from a treatment standpoint it's okay to keep diluting that term, but from a research standpoint we need to be much more precise. I wish somebody would take up the mantle of just that particular task.

Not only when one does meditation one is getting into a different realm, cognitively, but if you look at the imaging that's done on people when they're meditating, they indeed are entering a different portion of the brain which is activated.

There does seem to be a higher educational level in parents of autistic youngsters, and I guess that's something that we need to look into.