I was listening to an interview Terry Gross of NPR did with Oliver Sacks, the physician, neurologist, and author who has written many books on neurological disorders. One famous title is “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat”. Sacks himself is suffering from a melanoma behind his right eye that is being treated. The prognosis, for this particular location, is more hopeful than if the melanoma were elsewhere. Sacks has now lost his vision in that eye and, as a result, can no longer see in 3-D.

This is puzzling to me because I don’t, as happens to him, lose 3-D vision when I close one eye -- he sees everything as a flat plane. Nor do I have any difficulty perceiving depth in descending stairs, as he does. He says the stairs look flat, like a picture. Of course, the lack of peripheral vision on that side would be troublesome and a lot of head and body turning would be needed.

This leads me to believe that vision is highly individual, and goes beyond whether or not, for instance, one person is color-blind, and another is not. Also, there is a biological lack of perception in some people where they cannot remember faces. Sacks says that his tumor has caused him to have this problem and sometimes he cannot recognize his own face in the mirror. Isn’t that scary?

Anyway, I digress. If any of you have insights into how you see, please comment.

xx, Teal