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On a foggy, steel gray Saturday in September 2002, Bennet Omalu arrived at the Allegheny County coroner's office and got his assignment for the day: Perform an autopsy on the body of Mike Webster, a professional football player.

What I did when I identified Mike Webster's thing, I showed it to other doctors. We all agreed that this was something new, but we had to give it a name. This was not dementia pugilistica. Maybe we could have called it dementia footballitica!

I was now successful in proving that a direction of movement is localized in the cerebellum.

He suffered from paralysis by analysis.

Posttraumatic stress is something that's always existed. I think that the earliest recording was during the Trojan War, but it's only recently that we're beginning to be aware of it.

When I read Mike Webster's file before I began his autopsy, I knew he was more than a 50-year-old heart attack victim. His file and the television reports of the death of the former Pittsburgh Steelers center described a long, steep fall into bizarre behavior. I suspected he suffered from some sort of brain disorder.

I think what's known about neurology is still scattered and uncertain.

The story of Bennet Omalu is a riveting story; it's just a riveting tale. I knew from the beginning if I stayed close to that kind of storytelling and focussed on the character, then the other stuff comes along with it, and the message becomes baked into the journey.

Even in my first analysis of a depressive psychosis, I was immediately struck by its structural similarity with obsessional neurosis.

A graceful taunt is worth a thousand insults.