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

With respect to why some acquired savants are musical, and some are good at the arts, and some are mathematical, why aren't they all the same; I think that has to do with this genetic endowment that all of us have.

The narrower we define autism, and the more strictly we control for particular behaviors, the more likely we are to find what I think are the subgroups of autism.

Now I realize, and I acknowledge, that the right brain/left brain distinction is a tremendous oversimplification. We don't come neatly divided into right and left hemispheres, but the fact is that the two hemispheres of the brain do specialize in certain functions.

We have to be careful that we don't keep multiplying disorders and diluting them. I think there is a difference. People talk about Asperger's as high-functioning autism, which I think it is. But it does have some of its own characteristics, like the preservation of language, particularly, which may be right brain dysfunction instead of left brain dysfunction, and we lose something in that, as things lose their specificity, and we keep diluting things. I'm not sure that's helpful.

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.

I think that if I could do any sort of research of autism that I wanted to do, at this point I would take a sample of classic, early infantile autism persons and compare them with what I call "classic late onset autism", individuals. I think we will find that the cause of those youngsters with autism who have autism from birth is probably different than those who have late onset autism.