Binocular Differences in Cortical Receptive Fields of Kittens After Rotationally Disparate Binocular Experience

Abstract

Kittens were afforded visual experience only while wearing goggles fitted with prisms that rotated the inputs to the two eyes equally but in opposite directions about the visual axes (16 degrees for experimental subjects, 0 degrees for control subjects). Subsequently, receptive-field organization of the visual cortex was studied, special attention being given to the preferred orientation centered about the prism rotation experienced during early development. Thus, for moderate amounts of relative rotation, the development of interocular matching of orientation specificity in binocular cells of the visual cortex reflects the correspondence of early visual input between the two eyes.