We don’t think of highly gifted people as mentally disabled. Perhaps we should

I’m intrigued by this recent study suggesting that intellectual gifts and learning disabilities, far from lying on opposite ends of a spectrum of intelligence, sometimes go hand in hand. Intrigued, but not surprised.

Very bright people can be odd – we all know that. The eccentric genius is one of the clichés of history and fiction. But it’s rooted in observation. One thinks of wild-haired Oxford dons at high table, singing music hall songs in iambic pentameter while spraying their neighbours in Brown Windsor soup. Or the story of a distinguished academic banned from dining in his own college after – so legend has it – reinforcing his argument about the intellectual failings of women by exposing himself in front of horrified guests.

Some of this eccentricity is deliberately cultivated (and magnified by booze); sometimes it is charmingly spontaneous; occasionally there’s the whiff of mental disorder. But any such disorder is usually assumed to be an aspect of a certain sort of high intelligence.