title: Keeping an eye on the brain: the role of visual experience in monkeys and children.
abstract: The quality of visual experience during infancy determines the functional sensitivity and precision of the mature primate visual system. Infant monkeys subjected to monocular form deprivation show a period of critical visual development that, though decreasing in sensitivity, lasts throughout the first 2 years of life. Photopic threshold spectral sensitivity appears to have a briefer critical period, which is essentially complete by 6 months old, whereas scotopic visual functions appear well developed by 3 months old. Binocular visual functions seem to have the longest period of sensitivity to abnormal visual experience because periods of monocular form deprivation initiated during the first 2 years affect visual functions. Viewing the world through prisms, which mimics the condition of strabismus, causes a permanent loss of cortical binocular cells and stereopsis in monkeys. This result explains stereoblindness in children having equivalent clinical histories.
authors.affiliation: Sensory Sciences Center, University of Texas.
authors.forename: M L
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Crawford
authors.forename: R S
authors.initials: RS
authors.lastname: Harwerth
authors.forename: E L
authors.initials: EL
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.forename: G K
authors.initials: GK
authors.lastname: von Noorden
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000831:Animals, Newborn / Q000254:growth & development*; D015858:Anisometropia / Q000503:physiopathology; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003867:Depth Perception / Q000502:physiology; D004172:Diplopia / Q000503:physiopathology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008253:Macaca mulatta / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D008954:Models, Biological; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D013285:Strabismus / Q000503:physiopathology; D014786:Vision Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000502:physiology; D014795:Visual Pathways; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*