Summary
Rabbits were reared with the eyelids of one eye sutured closed (monocular sensory deprivation) from birth to approximately six months of age. Single neurons were then recorded from the binocular region of the visual cortex contralateral to the deprived eye. Unlike similar neurons from the cat, these cells showed a) no evidence of lowered spontaneous activity rates or “sluggish” and “easily fatigued” responses, b) no evidence of “abnormal” receptive fields, c) very little change in relative binocularity, and d) no increase in the percentage that were “non-visual”. However, there was evidence for a) a decrease in the relative amount of clustering of preferred directions around horizontal and vertical, b) a shift in the distribution of binocular dominance toward the normally-experienced ipsilateral eye, and c) an increase in the percentage of binocular cells with non-identical receptive fields in the two eyes. These changes following prolonged periods of monocular sensory deprivation during rearing are taken as further evidence for the degree of dissimilarity between the binocular visual systems of the rabbit and the cat.
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National Institutes of Health, National Bye Institute Special Research Fellow.
This research was supported by an American Optometric Foundation Fellowship, a National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Fellowship (No. NB 43, 275), and a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship (No. 41005) awarded to Dr. Van Sluyters, as well as a National Institutes of Health Research Grant (No. PHS NS 9750-01) awarded to Dr. Stewart, and was submitted by Dr. Van Sluyters in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Ph.D. degree in Physiological Optics at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.
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Van Sluyters, R.C., Stewaet, D.L. Binocular neurons of the rabbit's visual cortex: Effects of monocular sensory deprivation. Exp. Brain Res. 19, 196–204 (1974). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00238534
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00238534