The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names in research.

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.

Sometimes along the way, when people are actively working, they will start to do a search for their roots and maybe get really interested in ancestry and become very good at what was just a hobby. But I think that we shouldn't wait quite that long to develop and look for those parallel interests of ours and not sometimes see them as frivolous and take them a little more seriously, and spend some time and energy and maybe even capital in pursuing them.

A savant, by definition, is somebody who has a disability and, along with that disability, has some remarkable ability. Prodigies and geniuses have the remarkable abilities that the savant shows, but they do not have a disability. So, by definition, a savant includes someone with a disability, and a prodigy or genius are people who have these remarkable skills but they do not have a disability.

When you first try to learn to ride a bike, you work very carefully at keeping your balance, and trying to keep one pedal in front of the other, and all that, and all of a sudden, ah, you know, I got it. And that's true of skiing, or it's true of all kinds of things.

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.

Not everyone who has a savant skill I would equate with a genius.