Coming to Our Senses

May 1, 2021
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.

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May 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.