Eyes on the Brain

A neurobiologist explores the amazing capacity of the brain to rewire itself at any age.

Susan R. Barry is a professor of neurobiology in the Department of Biological Sciences at Mount Holyoke College and the author of Fixing My Gaze (June, 2009). See full bio

November 16, 2009

Are We Making Ourselves Stupider?

I remember the day my daughter (now age 24 years) discovered her feet. I had dressed her with brightly colored socks and laid her down on her back in the middle of our big bed. As she waved her feet back and forth, one foot passed through her field of view. She looked startled and was able to move the foot back into view. Over and over again, she wiggled her foot, saw it wiggle, and laughed. This was a big day for our little girl. She now knew what it felt like to wiggle her foot and that she could control its movements.

November 6, 2009

A child’s way of counting reveals why we are so smart.

Children first count with their fingers, a skill that depends upon specific brain-body wiring. Is our intelligence in general dependent upon brain-brain connections? Read More

November 4, 2009

A child’s way of counting reveals why we are so smart.

Ask any four-year-old child for his age, and chances are he will hold up four fingers. He will count and add with his fingers too, and this is true for children all over the world. To count with your fingers, you need to be able to move each finger separately, a skill which requires special brain-finger wiring. Does our ability to count and calculate then depend upon our brain-finger connection?

October 27, 2009

How a Child’s Drawing Reveals the Map in our Brain.

When my kids were small, I had them draw a self-portrait on each birthday. Their pictures revealed how they sensed the world.

October 19, 2009

Seeing and Knowing

If we can't recognize something, we may not see it at all.

October 8, 2009

Does the way you see affect your personality?

Can you predict how a person sees by the way they behave? Read More

September 27, 2009

How To Rewire Your Brain, Part 4: Doctors and Patients.

I needed more than good training techniques to rewire my brain. Read More

September 4, 2009

How To Rewire Your Brain, Part 3: Experiencing the World like a Child.

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 When Beverly Biderman, who was deaf since childhood, learned to hear again using a cochlear implant, she used to go on "sound hunts." She made all sorts of discoveries like the whistling noise at the end of a word is the sound of "s." Sounds that were obvious to you or me were revelations to Biderman, and these discoveries were key to rewiring her brain.
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August 25, 2009

How to Rewire Your Brain, Part II: An Intensely Conscious Act.

A few years ago I had a phone conversation with Michael Chorost, the author of Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human. The fact that we were talking to each other over a distance of 3000 miles was incredible enough (although we take telephones for granted) but what was even more astonishing was that I was talking to man who is profoundly deaf. Read More

August 18, 2009

How to Rewire Your Brain. Part 1: The Importance of Everyday Experiences.

How do you change your brain? How can you recover from a neurological injury such as a stroke or learn to see or hear in a new way? I've gathered a number of clues from my own experience in gaining stereovision as well as from talking with and reading about others. In the next several posts, I'll describe what I've learned. Here's the first tip: Read More

Books by Susan R. Barry, Ph.D.

Fixing My Gaze: A Scientist's Journey Into Seeing in Three Dimensions

Neuroscience Basics

The human brain has been called the most complex object in the known universe, and in many ways it's the final frontier of science. A hundred billion neurons, close to a quadrillion connections between them, and we don't even fully understand a single cell.

Go to the Neuroscience Basics page for more on Neuroscience including:

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Books by Susan R. Barry, Ph.D.

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