A Scientist's Journey Into Seeing in Three Dimensions
April 27, 2009
Barry, a neuroscientist at Mount Holyoke College, was born with her eyes crossed and literally couldn't see in all three dimensions. Barry underwent several surgeries as a child, but it wasn't until she was in college that she realized she wasn't seeing in 3-D. The medical profession has believed that the visual center of the brain can't rewire itself after a critical cutoff point in a child's development, but in her 40s, with the help of optometric vision therapy, Barry showed that previously neglected neurons could be nudged back into action. The author tells a poignant story of her gradual discovery of the shapes in flowers in a vase, snowflakes falling, even the folds in coats hanging on a peg. After Barry's story was written up in the New Yorker
by Oliver Sacks, she heard from many others who had successfully learned to correct their vision as adults, challenging accepted wisdom about the plasticity of the brain. Recommended for all readers who cheer stories with a triumph over seemingly insuperable odds. Photos, illus.
June 1, 2009
Until she was nearly 50, Barry lacked stereovision. Childhood surgery to correct her inability to move her eyes together was unsuccessful. Despite 20/20 vision in each eye, reading was difficult, and depth perception much more so. Learning of stereovision at 20, she subsequently studied and taught neurobiology. Only when episodes of double-vision became intolerable did she undertake the therapy that unexpectedly brought a cure. At last she could see the space between and around things, and to this day she retains her wonder at how things pop out at her. While telling her personal story, she regularly refers to the progress of knowledge about how human eyes work, knowledge accumulated since the early twentieth centuryindeed, within recent decades. She also touches on the historic alienation of eye surgeons (ophthalmologists) from vision therapists (optometrists) that still leads the former to assertions, such as the irreversibility of defects of vision after early childhood, that the latter have disproven in their casework. Another exemplary and informative testimony to the probably lifelong plasticity of the brain.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)