This is a profoundly smart science book and an inspiring memoir about change that is detailed and complex, quirky and engaging. Readers will connect with Sue's struggles, discoveries, and triumphs. When neuroscientist Susan Barry was fifty years old, she took an unforgettable trip to Manhattan. She saw the city in an astonishingly new way. With each glance, she experienced the deliriously novel sense of immersion in a three dimensional world. Barry had been cross-eyed and stereoblind since early infancy. Scientists have long believed that the brain is malleable only during a 'critical period' in early childhood, and that there was no way she could begin to see in three dimensions. But after intensive training, she was able to accomplish what other scientists and even she herself had once considered impossible. A revelatory account of the brain's capacity for change, "Fixing My Gaze" describes Barry's remarkable journey and celebrates the joyous pleasure of our senses.

About the Author

Susan R. Barry is a professor of neurobiology in the Department of Biological Sciences at Mount Holyoke College. She speaks regularly to scientists, eye doctors, and educators on the topic of neuronal plasticity. She lives in South Hadley, Massachusetts.

Reviews

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) Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.