Summary: Lynn Koegel Co-Director of the Koegel Autism Institute of the University of California at Santa Barbara discusses the early results of new research on Autism. Cure? Inventors are lucky if they create many inventions through their lifetime. Barry Blesser has done that. In 1960s he along with a colleague at MIT converted analog sound into digital sound and put it on a computer, thus enabling all of the digital audio technologies we experience today. Barry is also a philosopher. He describes his philosophical outlook as “plasticity” nothing is inevitable. He joins me in a Skype video interview to discuss his philosophy and how he interprets the world in which we live in. How sound affects the way we live and how different types of minds have different types of strengths. How commercial interests force us to categorize natural occurrences into medical diagnoses. Barry Blesser Author, Inventor, Philosopher, University Professor and gentle human being. Three years ago Autism Speaks awarded Dr. Pamela Wolfberg of California State University at San Francisco the 2008 Research Award for Clinical Research for a project using Wolfberg’s Integrated Play Groups™ (IPG) model. This research involved typical children playing with children with Autism at an afterschool program. Now that research project is completed, Mariel Goldberg, age 9 ¾, one of the expert players that participated in the project joins me to share some of the things she and the other participants learned. (Full disclosure, Mariel is also my youngest daughter.)
