Savant talents, further, have a more autonomous, even automatic quality than normal ones. They do not seem to occupy the mind or attention fully—Stephen will look around, listen to his Walkman, sing, or even talk while he is drawing; Jedediah Buxton’s huge calculations moved ahead at their own fixed, imperturbable rate while he went on with his daily life. Savant talents do not seem to connect, as normal talents do, to the rest of the person. All this is strongly suggestive of a neural mechanism different from that which underlies normal talents.
