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Book Cover
Book
Author Barry, Susan R.

Title Fixing my gaze : a scientist's journey into seeing in three dimensions / Susan R. Barry
Published New York : Basic Books, [2009]
©2009

Copies

Location Call no. Vol. Availability
 W'PONDS  617.762 Bar/Fmg  AVAILABLE
Description xvi, 249 pages : illustrations ; 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
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, enclosing and commanding palpable volumes of space. Leaves created intricate mosaics in 3D. With each glance, she experienced the deliriously novel sense of immersion in a three dimensional world."
"Susan Barry had been cross-eyed and stereoblind since early infancy. After half a century of perceiving her surroundings as flat and compressed, on that day she was seeing Manhattan in stereo depth for the first time in her life. As a neuroscientist, she understood just how extraordinary this transformation was, not only for herself but for the scientific understanding of the human brain. Scientists have long believed that the brain is malleable only during a "critical period" in early childhood. According to this theory, Barry's brain had organized itself when she was a baby to avoid double vision - and there was no way to rewire it as an adult. But Barry found an optometrist who prescribed a little-known program of vision therapy; after intensive training, Barry was ultimately able to accomplish what other scientists and even she herself had once considered impossible."--BOOK JACKET
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 179-236) and index
Subject Barry, Susan R. -- Health.
Behavioral optometry.
Depth perception.
Neurobiologists -- United States -- Biography.
Strabismus -- Patients -- United States -- Biography.
Visual training.
Genre/Form Autobiographies.
LC no. 2009008900
ISBN 0465009131 (alk. paper)
9780465009138 (alk. paper)