Fixing My Gaze: A Scientist's Journey Into Seeing in Three Dimensions

Not long ago, Susan Barry took a trip to Manhattan. As she emerged from the subway into daylight, she paused to take in a view that she had seen many times before but saw now in a completely new way. Buildings loomed out toward her like the bows of giant ships. Tree branches projected outward, capturing a palpable volume of space. For the first time, she was seeing Manhattan in depth.

In Fixing My Gaze, Barry describes the astonishing experience of gaining binocular vision after a lifetime of seeing in two dimensions. Intensive vision therapy created new neural connections, and with them, a new view of the world. Challenging conventional wisdom that the brain is programmed for life during a "critical period" in childhood, Barry offers a poignant and revelatory account of our capacity for change.

For almost five decades, author Barry (Neurobiology, Mount Holyoke College) had no idea what it was to see depth and texture. At age 48, however, she gained stereovision for the first time. In this engrossing and often moving book, Barry relates what it was like to live in a flat world (including the strategies that she used to cope with her lack of depth perception), and she describes the process by which her eyes and brain were trained to work with each other and produce stereovision. Along the way, she examines how vision defects can affect the ways that we function in the world, and discusses whether her attainment of stereovision as an adult indicates that the mature human brain is more malleable than has been believed. Mixing cutting-edge neuroscience with Barry's personal experience, this book will interest both researchers and general readers. Annotation ©2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

From the Foreword by Dr. Oliver Sacks, author of Musicophilia:

Fixing My Gaze is a beautiful description and appreciation of two very distinct ways of seeing — with and without the benefit of stereoscopy. But it is also an exploration of much more. Sue Barry is at pains not only to present her story, in clear and lucid, often poetic, language, but also, as a scientist, to provide understanding and explanation. She is in a unique position to do this, drawing on both her personal experience and her background as a neurobiologist...a very remarkable exploration of the brain's ability to change and adapt, and an ode to the fascination and wonder of the visual world, even those parts of it which many of us take for granted."

A neuroscientist tells the remarkable story of how she rewired her own brain and came to see the world anew.

Susan R. Barry is a professor of neurobiology in the Department of Biological Sciences at Mount Holyoke College. She lives in South Hadley, Massachusetts.