In the early 1960s, when Susan Barry was in the third grade at the Martha W. Hoyt School in Stamford, the assistant principal showed up one morning to demote her from the class for above-average students to the special-problems class. A boy was assigned to drag Barry’s desk behind her down the hall, and the embarrassing scraping sound it made on the floor would haunt her for years.

This was just one of many humiliations Barry experienced because she had suffered since infancy with a vision problem that affects millions of children, but which is still profoundly misunderstood by science.

In infancy, Barry developed a condition called strabismus, a misalignment of the eyes that causes a variety of conditions; in Barry’s case, cross-eyes. Three surgeries as a child made her eyes appear straight, but they still were poorly aligned and sent such confusing signals to her brain that she experienced double vision and difficulty reading.

Barry compensated like those with similar vision problems. Her brain suppressed the image from one eye so she could learn to read. But she could barely see things at a distance. As a result, her brain could not compare the images from both eyes, which would create the perception of depth. Thus, she lacked the stereo vision of normal sight. To judge distances, Barry used other senses or cues, such as placing her hands in front of her, or counting steps. Her world was jittery and flat.

Doctors told her this condition could never be changed because she had passed the critical period of early childhood, after which the brain becomes fixed and cannot be rewired to read correct signals from the eyes.

But now, in a development that could have vast impact on everything from learning disabilities to soldiers returning from war with traumatic brain injuries, Barry has contradicted the scientific and medical community and proven that the adult brain is considerably more flexible than originally thought.

In “Fixing My Gaze: A Scientist’s Journey into Seeing in Three Dimensions,” Barry describes how, at 48, she began vision therapy that accomplished what the best scientists of her generation said could never be achieved — a brain that can read eye signals properly and allow sight in three dimensions.

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