Effects of brief periods of unilateral eye closure on the kitten's visual system

Abstract

Normal kittens 29 days of age were briefly deprived of vision in 1 eye for 6 h-8 days. Single unit recordings from area 17 showed that perceptible shifts in cortical ocular dominance followed deprivation periods as brief as 1 day, while 4 or more days of deprivation produced shifts nearly as large as those seen in animals deprived for much longer periods. These ocular dominance changes were preceded by a reduction in the responsiveness and stimulus selectivity of the receptive fields devoted to the deprived eye, and accompanied by an apparent shrinkage in the physiologically-determined ocular dominance columns devoted to the deprived eye. Measurements of the cross-sectional area revealed changes in LGN [lateral geniculate nucleus] cell size that paralleled the cortical dominance changes. Cells driven by the deprived eye were 10% smaller in area than those driven by the experienced eye after 1 day of deprivation, 20% smaller after 4 days and nearly 30% smaller after 8 days. The similarity between the rate and extent of cortical and geniculate changes suggested that they may share a common origin.