The Mind's Eye By Oliver Sack Summary

Due to flexible wiring, the brain is capable of learning new traits and habits. This predisposition to learn allows the brain to learn according to its surrounding environment. In Oliver Sack’s essay, “The Mind’s Eye”, emphasis is placed on the notion that the brain is capable of rewiring itself based on certain traumas. Sacks does so by evaluating the way in which people respond to the trauma of becoming blind later in life. Leslie Bell applies a similar ideology in her work, “Hard to Get: Twenty-Something Women and the Paradox of Sexual Freedom”. In her study, Bell found that the influences women experience, be it familial or societal, affect how women act out their sexual desires. “Immune to Reality” by Daniel Gilbert, also explores this

Sacks’ study on blindness challenges the view of nature versus nurture through the examination of pain and pleasure in Gilbert’s work, familial influences in Bell’s work, and through how the brain rewires itself when faced with trauma.

Going through a trauma, such as becoming blind later in life, often conjures up feelings of pain and pleasure within a person. At first, a person experiences pain such as Gilbert discusses. Sometimes physical, but in Sacks’ case it is emotional. One must be able to muster up the strength to overcome the obstacles that accompany becoming blind. Sacks talks about such a scenario by stating, “Going blind, especially later in life, presents one with a huge potentially overwhelming challenge: to find a new way of living, of ordering one’s world, when the old way has been destroyed” (329). This statement insinuates a form of work hard and be rewarded type of mind set that would in turn create pleasure within the individual. Gilbert believes that this idea of pain and pleasure is human nature;

This flexibility is crucial because the brain must be able to withstand anything thrown at it. Sacks states that, “Cognitive scientists have known for the past few decades that the brain is far less hardwired than once was thought” (330). From this lack of hardwiring, the brain has the ability to grow and rewire itself in order to better suit its surroundings. It is because of this that people are able to adapt to their surroundings, and deal with trauma. Whenever a person goes through a traumatic experience, the brain rewires itself in such a way that it forgets the event and moves on from it. This is nurturing because this only happens when something occurs or when the person’s surroundings are constantly changing, which means that it is something that is learned rather than inherited. For instance, Gilbert states, “It is only when we cannot change the experience that we look for ways to change our view of the experience” (138). Using this excerpt, a similar theory is applicable. The brain takes the unchangeable experience, and rewires itself to see it differently. Just because rewiring occurs, does not mean that it is a drastic change. Something as small as changing one’s perspective on an experience, can assist the brain in making new connections. This is in a sense a rewiring through creation. In Bell’s studies, Jayanthi’s brain adapted the quickest out