Eustacia Cutler, Temple Grandin's mother, earned a B.A. from Harvard, was a band singer at the Pierre Hotel, New York City, performed and composed for NYC cabaret, and wrote school lessons for major TV networks. Her research on autism and retardation created the script for two WGBH television documentaries: The Disquieted and The Innocents, a prize-winning first. Her 2006 book, A Thorn in My Pocket, describes raising Temple in the conservative world of the '50s when autistic children were routinely diagnosed as infant schizophrenics and banished to institutions.

Today Cutler lectures nationally and internationally on autism and its relation to the rapidly emerging bio-neurological study of brain plasticity. She discusses what causes rigid behavior in autism, the toll it takes on the family, and how current research into the neural nature of consciousness is pointing toward insightful possibilities of change.

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