The Mind's Eye / Oliver Sacks / 263 pp.

The Mind's Eye is another “popular neurology” book by Oliver Sacks. While I did not find it as accessible or emotionally-wrenching as Sacks’ The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, I still enjoyed this book. The Mind's Eye highlights people who have lost some part of their perception or “vision.” Among others, Sacks highlights a pianist who looses her ability to mentally recognize objects (including written scores), a writer who overnight looses his ability to recognize letters and thus read, and a woman whose depth perception is restored, giving her a 3-D view of the world. Having read other Sacks books, I especially enjoyed this book’s revelations about Sacks himself, chronicling his battle with an eye tumor and his inability to recognize faces.

Here is a section I found particularly thought-inspiring where Sacks talks about how other senses can be heightened in a blind person.

“Ben Underwood [who had both eyes removed at age three] developed an astonishing, dolphin-like strategy of emitting regular clicks with his mouth and accurately reading the resulting echoes from nearby objects. He was so adept at moving about the world in this way that he was able to play field sports and even chess” (p.235).

MOBIUS, Amazon