Binoculars!

I found a bunch of interesting stuff in this weeks articles, so I'll go through only a few of the. One thing that intrigued me was the descriptions in both the Sacks and Morgan articles about what it is like to live with monocular vision. Just as Sue was unable to imagine what she was missing before she learned to see binocularly, I found it extremely difficult to picture life on a mostly two-dimensional plane. My first thought after reading her description of flowers with her newly acquired 3-D abilities, how they seem "'intensely real, inflated,' where they were 'flat' before" was along the lines of well yes, they look real because they ARE real. How else would they look? Yet Sacks, as usual, has a way of communicating a condition that is normally completely out of the grasp of a neurotypical individual in an impressively relatable way. He utilizes a recognizable artistic trait that most everyone does, closing one eye in order to frame a shot with a camera, to illustrate the effects of monocular vision. Morgan on the other hand, with his Cyclopean vision, fails (in my opinion) to relate the condition as clearly. This is a classic example of the big dilemma in neuropsychological literature; how does one convey, in simple terms, the extent of a disorder or condition that is to the majority of the audience simply ineffable? How far can words go to describe visual phenomena, and can those words in the end give enough information?

Another part of the Sacks article that I found interesting was Sacks' willingness to incorporate all sorts of angles into his investigation of Sue's vision, that is, not simply looking at how her eyes or brain functions but also considering unexpected, abstract objects like will power and desire. Sue writes in her letter to Sacks about how she always, almost subconsciously, wanted to see in more depth. Sacks responds to this, "Was it possible that the intensity of this wish had made her believe that she was seeing in stereo when she actually was not?" This readiness to consider other aspects like emotion and conviction make Sacks' musings intriguing if inconclusive.

Additionally, I want to draw attention to the craziness that is the response Sacks got from Shimojo about the variation of binocular and monocular balance in individuals...I think the idea that the brain takes an average and dubs sit good enough is a bit of betrayal on my brain's part. Are my eyes lying to me? How different is the world I see from the world my friend sees? How much more or less depth do I enjoy in my visual field? In any case, I'm glad my binocular vision developed during my critical period, when it was supposed to!