Coming to Our Senses: A Boy Who Learned to See, a Girl Who Learned to Hear, and How We All Discover the World

by Susan R. Barry

Overview

A neurobiologist reexamines the personal nature of perception in this groundbreaking guide to a new model for our senses.

We think of perception as a passive, mechanical process, as if our eyes are cameras and our ears microphones. But as neurobiologist Susan R. Barry argues, perception is a deeply personal act. Our environments, our relationships, and our actions shape and reshape our senses throughout our lives.

This idea is no more apparent than in the cases of people who gain senses as adults. Barry tells the stories of Liam McCoy, practically blind from birth, and Zohra Damji, born deaf, in the decade following surgeries that restored their senses. As Liam and Zohra learned entirely new ways of being, Barry discovered an entirely new model of the nature of perception. Coming to Our Senses is a celebration of human resilience and a powerful reminder that, before you can really understand other people, you must first recognize that their worlds are fundamentally different from your own.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541675162
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	06/08/2021
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
File size:	22 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Susan R. Barry is professor emeritus of biology and neuroscience at Mount Holyoke College, where she researched stereovision, plasticity, and coordination. She's written for and been covered by the New York Times, LA Times, Big Think, NPR's Morning Edition and Fresh Air, and elsewhere. You might know Barry as "Stereo Sue," a nickname bestowed by Oliver Sacks when he wrote about her for a New Yorker essay that was later anthologized in The Mind's Eye. She lives in Massachusetts.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Blessing or Curse? 1

Part I Liam

1 How Far Is Your Vision? 17

2 Dr. Ridley's Brainchild 37

3 A Window on the Brain 41

4 Faces 65

5 Finding Things 73

6 Vision's Greatest Teacher 83

7 Going with the Flow 93

8 Finding His Way 99

9 Christmas Lights on the Grass 121

Part II Zohra

10 Everything Has a Name 127

11 Persistence Pays Off 141

12 An Uncanny Feeling 149

13 Squeaks, Bangs, and Laughter 153

14 Talking to Others 161

15 Talking to Herself 173

16 Musical Notes 179

17 The Cocktail Party Problem 185

18 Zohra Damji, MD 189

Conclusion: Athletes of Perception 193

Acknowledgments 215

Figure Credits 217

Notes 221

Index 243

Editorial Reviews

05/31/2021

Neurobiologist Barry (Fixing My Gaze) explores sight, hearing, and perception in this triumphant survey of people who gained a sense they were born without. She spotlights three individuals: Zohra Damji, who was born deaf and received a cochlear implant at age 12; Liam McCoy, who was born with albinism and lived in “a cocoon of visual blur” until he had intraocular lenses inserted into his eyes at age 15; and Barry herself, who was cross-eyed and stereoblind until age 48, when surgery allowed her to see with both eyes. Barry examines the science behind how senses work (describing the workings of the human eye, for example), and how limitations in perception (both before and after surgery) inspired individual adaptations: McCoy still prefers to navigate some situations with a white cane, while Damji faced challenges because her implants weren’t as sensitive to pitch and timbre as the human ear. Barry skillfully balances scientific explanations with empathetic stories of how senses shape the human experience: “To ask the blind or deaf to acquire a new sense past childhood is to ask them to reshape their identity.” This powerful tale is as thoughtful as it is informative. (June)

Publishers Weekly

"Absolutely fascinating."—Temple Grandin

“In telling the detailed stories of how Liam and Zohra learned to navigate the world using their new senses — stories that in many ways mimic the way able-bodied infants accomplish the same thing — Barry gives us insight into what it means to be human.”—New York Times

"What would happen if you had a new sense grafted on your body? Sue Barry is alert to the many fascinating details of how Liam and Zohra navigated their new sensory experiences, essentially giving the reader a lab course in experimental philosophy. This moving work of biography and scholarship explores the deep questions that arise when people choose to live in bodies that have been made new and strange.”—Michael Chorost, author of, Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human

"Coming to Our Senses is an engaging and illuminating book. Barry’s intimate account of people who gained the ability to see and hear as adults offers rich insights into how we shape, and our shaped by, our senses. Along the way Barry teaches us much about vision, hearing and the human capacity to learn and adapt."

—Dennis M. Levi, UC Berkeley

“Neurobiologist Barry explores sight, hearing, and perception in this triumphant survey of people who gained a sense they were born without. Barry skillfully balances scientific explanations with empathetic stories of how senses shape the human experience… This powerful tale is as thoughtful as it is informative.”—Publisher’s Weekly

"Through stories of two amazing individuals, a neurobiologist explains how we see and hear...Even science‑savvy readers will find surprises in this insightful exploration of how two humans learned a new sense."
 
 —Kirkus

“Coming to Our Senses, by neurobiologist Susan Barry, explains how our actions shape and reshape our senses throughout our lives, delving into this deeply personal developmental process.”—New Scientist

“While researching the fascinating and inspiring story of a boy and a girl – born blind and deaf, respectively – who learned to see and hear after receiving surgical intervention, Barry, a neurobiologist who herself gained sight in both eyes in midlife, arrived at a new theory about the nature of perception.”—Toronto Globe & Mail

“Barry, who spent over a decade getting to know these two incredible people, profiles them with detail and  compassion, unraveling their stories through both personal and scientific lenses. The result is a book that reveals the ways in which scientific knowledge is profoundly tied to our understanding of human nature... Fascinating.”
 —The Wesleyan Connection

"Interweaving McCoy and Damji’s accounts with scholarly investigations of how perception works, Barry celebrates her subjects’ determination to adapt to their newfound senses."—Smithsonian Magazine Online

From the Publisher

2021-04-10
Through stories of two amazing individuals, a neurobiologist explains how we see and hear.

That newborns must learn to talk is old news, but Barry, professor emeritus of biology and neuroscience at Mount Holyoke College, points out that newborns come into an incomprehensible world. Their eyes detect shapes and colors, and their ears hear sounds, but nothing makes sense. Over their first few years, babies literally discover how to see and hear, after which their ability to do so plummets. Doctors have long known that children who have sight restored after being blind throughout childhood never regain full sight. The same is true for hearing in congenitally deaf children. Until recently, writes the author, “few attempts were made to restore vision or hearing in congenitally blind or deaf people older than eight years. By age eight, the brain, it was thought, was no longer plastic enough to allow for the development of a new sense.” Yet exceptions exist, and Barry delivers gripping accounts of two. The first, Liam McCoy, lived in a “cocoon of visual blur.” At age 15, surgeons inserted a second lens into his eye (keeping the original), which vastly improved his vision. The result was not a familiar scene but rather a “tangled, fragmented world” of colors, lines, and edges. Barry devotes the first half of the book to the five years during which Liam gradually made sense of his new world. The second, Zohra Damji, was profoundly deaf. She was fortunate in that the condition was diagnosed very early and that her extended family provided intense support and the large sum of money required for the cochlear implant she received at age 12. Her first experience with sound was “loud, scary, and uncomfortable” as well as incomprehensible, but she ultimately sailed through graduate school. Both stories are inspiring and well rendered by the author.

Even science-savvy readers will find surprises in this insightful exploration of how two humans learned a new sense.

Kirkus Reviews