Susan R. Barry

Susan R. Barry is a professor of neurobiology at Mount Holyoke College and the author of Fixing My Gaze: A Scientist's Journey into Seeing in Three Dimensions. Barry was dubbed Stereo Sue by neurologist and author Oliver Sacks in a 2006 New Yorker article with that name. Barry's book greatly expands on Sacks' article and discusses the experience of gaining stereovision through optometric vision therapy, after a lifetime of being stereoblind. It challenges the conventional wisdom that the brain is wired for perceptual skills during a critical period in early childhood and provides evidence instead for neuronal plasticity throughout life. Barry's achievement of stereo vision, with the help of a developmental optometrist Dr. Theresa Ruggiero, was reported in BBC's Imagine documentary broadcast on June 28, 2011

She graduated from Wesleyan University with B.A. in biology in 1976. Barry then did her graduate work at Princeton University where she earned an M.A. in biology in 1979 and a Ph.D. in biology in 1981.

She performed postdoctoral work at the University of Michigan and the Miami School of Medicine, and subsequently became assistant professor at the department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the University of Michigan Medical School.

Barry maintains a blog in the magazine Psychology Today, entitled Eyes on the Brain, which explores the practical applications of the theory of neuronal plasticity. She is married to astronaut Daniel T. Barry.

Barry had been affected by alternating esotropia since early age, and had undergone corrective operations to her eye muscles at two, three and seven years of age. At the age of forty, she became aware of difficulties in correctly perceiving objects at a distance, such as road signs and faces. The ophthalmologist whom she consulted told her that her eyesight of both eyes had only small flaws which were already corrected by her eyeglasses. Years later, after a colleague drew her attention to her tendency to disregard raised hands at the back of the large classroom, she consulted an optometrist who referred her to Ruggiero. With her, Barry embarked on vision therapy to stabilize her gaze. using the approach developed by Frederick W. Brock, including for example exercises to aim the two eyes at the same point in space using the Brock string.

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