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

Author: Susan R. Barry

Narrator: Rengin Altay

Unabridged: 6 hr 56 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 06/08/2021

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included


Synopsis

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.

Author Bio

Susan R. Barry is Professor Emeritus of Biological Sciences and Neuroscience at Mount Holyoke College. She had been cross-eyed and stereoblind since early infancy but learned to see in three dimensions at age forty-eight by retraining her visual system with optometric vision therapy. Her story was first described by Oliver Sacks in his New Yorker article, Stereo Sue, and then greatly expanded by Sue in her book, Fixing My Gaze: A Scientist's Journey Into Seeing in Three Dimensions. Her most recent book is Coming to Our Senses: A Boy Who Learned to See, A Girl Who Learned to Hear, and How We All Discover the World.

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