Achromatopsy in the Works of Oliver Sacks

Abstract

Oliver Sacks (1933-2015) has been one for the most prominent authors in scientific popularizing of neurology. His works stimulated the interest of public in this field, but Sacks’s contribution in the relationship between neurology and ophthalmology is not so well known. In this paper, we analyze his works regarding achromatopsia, a disorder of retinal cones that produces a black and white vision. Sacks analyzed several types, as transient achromatopsia, which appears in migraine aura, but the most interesting were those linked to congenital and acquired achromatopsia. The first was studied in the population of Pingelap, an island in Micronesia, and explained in The island of the colorblind (1996), whereas the second was reported in The case of colorblind painter (1995). In both works, Sacks described not only the pure medical aspects of the disorder, but considered in full its psychological and anthropological consequences. Reading these tales allows us to understand how chromatically limited vision affected, or not, their personal and social life.

Keywords

• oliver sacks
• neurorelatos
• oftalmología
• acromatopsia
• neuroantropología