Day 178: Susan Barry

March 27, 2010 at 12:01 am, Category: Inspiration

“As I got older, in my thirties, I noticed that it was getting harder and harder to see, particularly at a distance, because when I looked at things at a distance, everything would jitter, would appear to be jittery, unstable.”

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Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Susan, for agreeing to be part of the Project and before we begin, can you please introduce yourself?

Susan Barry: My name is Susan Barry.  Some people call me Sue.  I am a Professor of Biological Sciences and Neuroscience at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts.  I am also the author of a book called Fixing My Gaze:  A Scientist’s Journey Into Seeing in Three Dimensions.

Toni: Thank you so much for being part of this Project, and Susan, when you think of that word inspiration, who do you think you inspire and how do you do that?

Susan: Who I hope to inspire is everyone who has been a victim of a negative self-fulfilling prophecy.  So let me explain what I mean by that.  I have been cross-eyed since I was a little infant,  that means that if I looked at you with one eye, the other eye turned in and saw something else.  I had three surgeries in childhood when I was two, three, and seven years old, and the surgeries made my eyes look straight, but I still had problems with my vision.  I had trouble learning to read in school, trouble learning to drive, and I did not have stereo vision; that is, I did not see in 3D.   So if any of you have gone, for example, to see Avatar, the new 3D movie, and appreciated the 3D sense in the movie, that is the kind of vision that I lacked.

The doctors told me after my surgeries that nothing more could be done for my vision, because they told me – and this is the sort of scientific conventional wisdom of the day – that normal vision, and that includes seeing in stereo, seeing in 3D, normal vision has to develop in early childhood, or it is lost forever, so that if I didn’t develop stereo vision as a young child, I could never develop it as an adult.  And in fact, some of the scientists who won the Nobel Prize were the ones who had proposed and provided evidence for this theory, and this theory is called the Critical Period Theory, that there’s a critical period for the development of stereo vision, and that is in early childhood, and if you miss the critical period, then you miss out on learning to see in stereo.  Similarly, people have proposed critical periods for other skills, like learning languages.

So as I got older, in my thirties, I noticed that it was getting harder and harder to see, particularly at a distance, because when I looked at things at a distance, everything would jitter, would appear to be jittery, unstable.  It was hard to drive and see road signs at the same time.  I would sit in the middle of the school auditorium and watch my children on the stage, and their faces would seem to be a blur.  Yet, I had 20/20 acuity with each eye, so this didn’t make sense.  I went to the ophthalmologist, and he told me there was nothing wrong with my vision, and if I thought there was, I ought to go see a psychiatrist.

So I did not go see a psychiatrist, but after a number of additional years, I decided to consult a developmental optometrist.  Developmental optometrists are a special type of optometrists; sometimes they are also called behavioral optometrists, and they treat people with binocular vision disorders.  Crossed eyes is a binocular vision disorder.  You’re not using your two eyes together well.

So my developmental optometrist, her name is Dr. Ruggiero, guided me through a process of optometric vision therapy, and what she taught me was something that the average person learns within the first six months of life, and that is how to point the two eyes at the same place at the same time.  You know, when you’re cross-eyed, you don’t do that; you look with one eye and turn in the other.  She used a set of very elegant procedures and exercises to teach me where each eye was pointing, and then how to move the two eyes together so they both looked at the same thing at the same time.  And after learning how to do that, I began to see in three dimensions, and the change in my vision was absolutely spectacular.  Just spectacular.  I began to see the space between objects, the layers and layers of depth of leaves on trees, snow coming down with each snowflake in its own space with space between each snowflake, like a three-dimensional dance.  The whole world became wider, deeper, more detailed, and more depth-filled.  It was a truly remarkable experience.

Toni: It sounds it; and so how you inspire others is by getting your story out there of being tenacious on this particular obstacle that you were facing with your vision.  It really brought you great success and enormous potential with your vision.

Susan: Exactly, exactly; and what I learned was one of the reasons people with crossed eyes don’t achieve better vision, is this self-fulfilling prophecy – oh, you passed the critical period, you didn’t learn to see in 3D when you were very small, so it’s not possible to do it as an adult – and if that’s the mindset, then of course nobody’s going to get better, and that’s why I say that the people I hope to inspire is anyone who’s been  a victim of some kind of negative self-fulfilling prophecy.

Toni: How do you think by inspiring people with your story of maybe not believing in that critical period, how do you help others explore their potential?

Susan: Oh.  Well, the first thing I did was write my book, Fixing My Gaze, and the book of course is written in part for people who have a similar binocular vision problem, or parents of children with binocular vision problems such as crossed eyes or lazy eye, but it’s also a book written about brain plasticity, about the ability of our brain to change so that we can learn new things and new skills, and that this ability is present throughout your life.  It’s not just present when you’re a small baby or a small child.  We can continue to learn throughout our lives.

Toni: And so by people reading your book and understanding how this works, they can really apply this to any issue that they may be using an excuse of being stuck because they can’t learn a new skill, or maybe they feel that they’ve gone past that critical period.

Susan: Exactly; and in the book I try to explain, I am a science professor so my job is to try to explain complicated things in straightforward ways, and so in the book I explain a lot about vision, but I also explain a lot about brain plasticity.  How is it that the brain can indeed change?  How can the circuits be rewired?   Once people understand, gee, this sort of process can happen in my brain, then maybe that will empower them also to think gee, if I really work hard at something and I focus on a certain problem and I really work hard on solving it, you know, then I’ll be able to solve it.

I give a lot of talks and a lot of book readings, and I have to say, when I go out there into the public and tell my story, which is a personal story, it always gives you a moment of pause; how will other people treat your story?  Will they treat it with respect?  And people always do; and more than that, many people seem to appreciate what I say and then think, yes, maybe I can change too.

Toni: So, Susan, what inspires you?  What do you need to be inspired?

Susan: Other people.  Other people really inspire me, and I can think of a number of specific people.  First and foremost was my mother.  She did not believe the school authorities, for example, when they told her that because I was having trouble learning to read, they told her that I was simply a dumb kid, there was only so far I could go, and my mother did not believe them.  She taught me how to read, and she taught me much more.  She taught me the value of really practicing and persisting, and thinking on your own, not just accepting what, you know, somebody says just because they seem to be in a position of authority.

Another person who really inspires me is my husband.  He from 1992 to 2005, was an astronaut.  He flew in space three times, and he did four space walks.  All of his life he wanted to be an astronaut and everybody said to him, oh, you know, give it up – that’s just a dream, it’s not reality.  And he persisted; he applied to NASA 14 times, and it was on the fourteenth application that they took him in the astronaut core.  While, Dan, my husband, was involved with the space program, we met a lot of people.  I met four of the men who walked on the moon, and you know, I learned something from them.  What was their secret?  It was all about hard work and it was all about teamwork.

I’m greatly inspired by my students.  I have a student, for example now, who is profoundly deaf, but she wears a cochlear implant, a device that allows her to hear.  Now, she got this cochlear implant when she was 12 years old, and many doctors will tell you she’s too old; 12 is too old to be able to learn how to hear and to be able to use the cochlear implant to speak and to understand speech.  She’s proved them all wrong.  She’s one of the very best students in my class.  So some of my students and my children as well, they’re all very idealistic, and they have all this energy, and so it’s great for me to be around people like that, of that age, with all that idealism and energy, and they keep up my energy and spirit too.

Toni: When you wake up on a given day, Susan, and you think to yourself, oh, you know, I’m looking for a little inspiration here, what do you tend to reach for?  Are there tools or methodologies that you consistently reach for when you are looking for inspiration?

Susan: Let’s see; one of the tools … well, there are things that I do to relax, because if you relax sometimes good ideas come to you.  You know, things as simple as taking a shower.  I walk at least four miles a day, and I find the walking is … first of all, it allows me to look at the world, and since with my new vision that’s always a treat, but also on the other hand when I’m not looking at everything I’m daydreaming, and I think actually daydreaming is very important for that sort of thing.

And I do a lot of reading.  I’m a slow reader, so I need a lot of time to read, but I love to read and learn new things from the reading, and I’ve been inspired by quite a number of authors, including Dr. Oliver Sacks, who has published many books about people with neurological differences and you know, he really talks a lot about the human spirit and how we adapt to various problems that can occur.  His writing, and then also my friendship with him, and he also wrote a story about me called Stereo Sue, have been a very important source of inspiration for me.

Toni: And Sue, the final question in the Project is, what do you need to explore your own potential?

Sue: What do I need?

Toni: What do you do to continuously explore your own potential?

Sue: Well, one thing I do, and this is maybe on the sort of practical side, is that I continue to do vision therapy, which is what gave me my new vision, and I do this at home on my own as a way to explore my own visual system, and that has … and my vision is continuing to improve.

Another thing that I do to explore my own potential is I teach.  The way I want to help people is through writing and speaking, so I’m lucky.  I’m a college professor, so teaching is something that I have to do, and it’s also something where I can really hone my speaking skills, hone my ability to explain complicated things in straightforward ways, and also to inspire my students, hopefully, to take control of their own education and to have the confidence to accomplish the goals they want to accomplish.

I love to write.  I’ve written one book, and I plan to write more, and I find that writing really adds to your potential because it helps to focus and organize your thoughts.

I love to play the piano and sometimes I use the piano as a way to develop a new skill, as well as there’s something about music that helps to organize my own thoughts.

Then I would say the other thing that I need for my own potential is my family, my husband and kids, and not only because of all the support that they offer, but also because of all the fun and humor that we have.  You know, sometimes you can’t take life too seriously, and so they help me with that.

And like I said to you before, taking walks, playing the piano, reading, and I like to learn lots of new and different things.  So for example, I’d like to learn more geology, I’d like to learn to speak Italian, I’d like to learn more philosophy.  I love music theory.  And so every time I learn anything new, it just reminds me that I have the potential to keep learning and that our brains, all of us have brains that are very dynamic and keep changing.  I guess I would just say this – that I just turned 56 years old, but I feel that I am just getting started.

Toni: Your interview has been fascinating with what you have done for yourself, and how getting past and ignoring that theory that, you know, you missed that critical period, and how that really can play out, not only for people who are experiencing the vision issue that you did, but a life skill, a life, you know, a mental promise that you can … you need to not be stuck in that critical period or buy into that at all times.  I think that was pretty important to put out there.  You have just been wonderful.  Thank you so much, Susan, for everything that you’ve given during this interview, and we will post how people can get a hold of you, get your book at the bottom of the interview, and we wish you continued success.  Thank you.

Susan: And thank you for what you’re doing.

Toni: Thank you, Susan.  It’s been a pleasure.

Susan: Mine too.
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For more information about Susan Barry - www.stereosue.com, www.fixingmygaze.com, www.psychologytoday.com/blog/eyes-the-brain