Sunny Bains reviews Seeing Voices by Oliver Sacks.
Sacks paints a vivid picture of what signing looks like for those of us that haven’t really used it: explaining, for example, how the layout of a house can be drawn with such intricate detail that you can really ‘see’ all of it’s features as if a model had been built in front of you. To me, this is a fascinating example because it shows how different spoken and visual language can be: instead of moving sequentially through or around rooms as we would with our temporally based language, the deaf can use their enhanced spatial perception to see thing as a whole.
She’s a thoughtful, informed reviewer, interested in brains and machines. The review is a good quick read about a topic about which many of us wonder.