Early removal of one eye reduces normally occurring cell death in the remaining eye.
During normal development of the hamster eye, there is a substantial loss of cells from the retinal ganglion cell layer in the first two postnatal weeks. If one eye is lost at birth, this cell death is reduced in the remaining eye. This may account for the increased ipsilateral projection from this eye to the thalamus and midbrain observed in these animals.
D000818:Animals; D000831:Animals, Newborn; D002470:Cell Survival; D006224:Cricetinae; D007700:Kinetics; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology*; D051381:Rats; D012160:Retina / Q000166:cytology / Q000502:physiology*