Rare Eye Condition Takes Center Stage At NSUOCO

TAHLEQUAH Imagine that you are jamming to your favorite music. Suddenly, one of your speakers goes out. You can still hear the vocals and the melody, but something is missing: A certain depth. The layers of sound become uniformly fixed upon a background of silence.

This is how Dr. Sue Barry saw the world for 48 years of her life. She was diagnosed as a small girl with alternating esotropia, a condition in which the eyes are crossed and the brain only receives information for either the left or the right eye at one time. She could see the world around her, but it looked more like a painting, which lacked perceivable space between objects. This concept is difficult for most people to embrace, as they have seen the world through binocular vision their whole lives.

Barry explained how she has lived with her condition during a recent presentation to over 100 optometry students and faculty at the Northeastern State University Oklahoma College of Optometry on April 11.

After 48 years of seeing in monocular vision, Barry started a vision therapy program, which amazingly taught her to eventually see the world in stereo.

Barry was featured in The New Yorker in an article titled A Neurologists Notebook: Stereo Suewhy two eyes are better then one by Oliver Sacks and on NPR in June 2006. Currently, Barry is a professor of Biological Sciences at Mount Holyoke College where she teaches several courses in neurobiology. She is currently writing a book on visual plasticity and the ability to acquire stable binocular vision in adulthood.

For more information on optometry and vision therapy

NSU optometry students experience over 40,000 patient encounters every year. NSUOCO is Oklahomas only college of optometry and one of 17 in the U.S. and Puerto Rico.