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Fixing my gaze : a scientist's journey into seeing in three dimensions
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Fixing my gaze : a scientist's journey into seeing in three dimensions

Author: Susan R Barry
Publisher: New York : Basic Books, ©2009.
Edition/Format:   Book : Biography : EnglishView all editions and formats
Summary:
"When neuroscientist Susan Barry was fifty years old, she took an unforgettable trip to Manhattan. As she emerged from the dim light of the subway into the sunshine, she saw a view of the city that she had witnessed many times in the past but now saw in an astonishingly new way. Skyscrapers on street corners appeared to loom out toward her like the bows of giant ships. Tree branches projected upward and outward,  Read more...
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Details

Genre/Form: Biography
Named Person: Susan R Barry
Material Type: Biography
Document Type: Book
All Authors / Contributors: Susan R Barry
ISBN: 9780465009138 0465009131
OCLC Number: 246894504
Description: xvi, 249 p. : ill. ; 22 cm.
Contents: Stereoblind --
Mixed-up beginnings --
School crossings --
Knowing where to look --
Fixing my gaze --
The space between --
When two eyes see as one --
Nature and nurture --
Vision and revision.
Responsibility: Susan R. Barry.

Abstract:

A neuroscientist tells the remarkable story of how she rewired her own brainand came to see the world anew  Read more...

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Publisher Synopsis

From the foreword by Oliver Sacks

Though Sue originally thought her own case unique, she has since found a number of other people with strabismus and related problems who have unexpectedly achieved stereo vision through vision therapy. This is no easy accomplishment. It may require not only optical corrections (proper lenses or prisms, for example), but very intensive training and learning--in effect, learning how to align the eyes and to fuse their images, and unlearning the unconscious habit of suppressing vision which has been occurring perhaps for decades. In this way, vision therapy is directed at the whole person: it requires high motivation and self-awareness, and enormous perseverance, practice and determination, as does psychotherapy, for instance, or learning to play the piano. But it is also highly rewarding, as Sue brings out. And this ability to acquire new perceptual abilities later in life has great implications for anyone interested in neuroscience or rehabilitation, and, of course, for the millions of people who, like Sue, have been strabismic since infancy.

Sue's case, and many others, suggest that if there are even small islands of function in the visual cortex, there may be a fair chance of reactivating and expanding them in later life, even after a lapse of decades, if vision can be made optically possible. Cases like these may offer new hope for those once considered incorrigibly stereo-blind. "Fixing My Gaze" will offer inspiration for anyone in this situation, but it is equally a very remarkable exploration of t Read more...

 
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