bookreview


Fixing My Gaze: A Scientist’s Journey into Seeing in Three Dimensions


by Michal Luchins, O.D. N


euroscientist Dr. Susan Barry never saw the world as three- dimensional until she was fifty years old. After perceiving her surroundings as flat for nearly half a century, she finally could see depth. As a neuroscientist, she knew the implica- tions were significant for our under- standing of the brain.


It was a long-held belief by sci- entists that the brain is malleable only during a short time of childhood. Thus it was assumed that since Barry’s brain compensated for double vision as a child, it could not be rewired in adult- hood. As a child, she had a number of surgeries to cosmetically align her eyes, but never learned how to use her two eyes together to see 3-D. However, when she was in her late forties, she found an optometrist who prescribed a specific program of vision therapy. In 2006, Barry’s story became rather well-known after Dr. Oliver Sacks published her story in The New Yorker. The book, Best American Sci- ence Writing 2007, includes the article Stereo Sue in which Sacks relates her story.


Barry did not realize others had similar experiences until the publica- tion of the article by Sacks where she heard from many others who had suc- cessfully corrected their own similar vision problems as adults. With so many still not knowing of the option of optometric vision therapy, Barry knew she had to make her story public. In her 2009 autobiography Fixing


My Gaze: A Scientist’s Journey into Seeing in Three Dimensions, Barry’s poignant story comes alive. Rated fourth of all science books of 2009 by Amazon.com’s editors, this vivid and poetic account is presented in an engaging manner for all to read and enjoy.


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Vision therapy – a type of physical therapy for the eyes and brain – is a highly effective non-surgical treatment for many common visual problems such as lazy eye, crossed eyes, double vision, convergence insufficiency and some reading and learning disabilities. Many patients who have been told, “it’s too late,” or “you’ll have to learn to live with it” have benefited from vision therapy. In the case of learning


disabilities, vision therapy is specifically directed toward resolving visual problems which interfere with reading, learning and educational instruction.


–from VisionTherapy.org


Barry recounts the educational difficulties she suffered as a child because of her lack of eye coordina- tion. Although she had 20/20 vision in each eye, she had trouble learning to read and thus dreaded going to school. She recalls that letters on the page didn’t stay in place, with the problem growing worse as the print got smaller. That led to her performing miserably on a standardized achievement test in second grade and being transferred from the above-average class to the special-problems class for third grade. Barry recalls that her mother panicked. Although her mother was “the most law-abiding individual on earth,” she pilfered a copy of the achievement test to administer to Barry. In that quiet, relaxed atmosphere Barry scored much


naturalawakeningsro.com


higher. With her mother continuing to believe in her and reading with and to her constantly, by fifth grade the school finally agreed to transfer Barry back to a regular classroom. As Barry writes, “examples abound of children who have visual problems misdiagnosed as learning disorders.”


Barry also recounts how her eye coordination (eye-teaming) problems led to difficulties in athletics, bike-rid- ing and driving a car, among many other activities. She recounts that, while poor at observing nature’s animals (specifically, birds), she could study the neurons that enable them to sense and move through the world. Her first class in neurophysiology led to a career in neuroscience. As a professor of neu- robiology, she read numerous papers on visual processing, binocular vision and stereopsis. She felt this knowledge gave her special insight into what she was missing. Barry believed she knew what stereopsis must be like even if she had never experienced it. But after completing her vision therapy program, she wrote to Sacks “You asked me [at a chance meeting nine years earlier] if I could imagine what the world would look like when viewed with two eyes. I told you that I thought I could…. but I was wrong.” Her new vision was “ab- solutely delightful,” Barry wrote. “I had no idea what I had been missing.” Read her interesting and inspira- tional story. You will be glad you didn’t miss it.


Dr. Michal Luchins, optometric physi- cian, runs the Family Vision & Learn- ing Center in Suffern. She specializes in vision therapy and developmental optometry. Luchins can be reached at 369-3235, VisionAndLearning@ gmail.com or visit Optometrists.org/ DrLuchins.


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