Binocularity in prism-reared monkeys.
Prismatic binocular dissociation in infant monkeys mimicked a concomitant squint. Within 3 weeks, the numbers of binocular neurons in the primary visual cortex were reduced by half and did not recover with up to 5 years of subsequent unrestricted binocular visual experience. The monkeys failed to show binocular summation for spatial contrast sensitivity tasks and were unable to utilise horizontal binocular disparities in random-dot stereograms-two indices of stereoblindness. Electrophysiological analysis of the V1 and V2 cortices showed a dramatic reduction in binocular neurons. Analysis of interocular spatial phase tuning functions showed a conspicuous loss of excitatory binocular drive in V1 neurons which was sufficient to account for many of the defects in binocular function.
Crawford
M L
ML
The Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Science, Medical School at Houston, Texas, USA. jcrawfor@gsbs.gs.uth.tmc.edu
Harwerth
R S
RS
Chino
Y M
YM
Smith
E L
EL
D000818:Animals; D003867:Depth Perception; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D008251:Macaca; D009474:Neurons / Q000473:pathology*; D013285:Strabismus / Q000473:pathology* / Q000503:physiopathology; D015348:Vision, Binocular; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000473:pathology*