title: Monocular deprivation of Fourier phase information boosts the deprived eye's dominance during interocular competition but not interocular phase combination.
abstract: Ocular dominance has been extensively studied, often with the goal to understand neuroplasticity, which is a key characteristic within the critical period. Recent work on monocular deprivation, however, demonstrates residual neuroplasticity in the adult visual cortex. After deprivation of patterned inputs by monocular patching, the patched eye becomes more dominant. Since patching blocks both the Fourier amplitude and phase information of the input image, it remains unclear whether deprivation of the Fourier phase information alone is able to reshape eye dominance. Here, for the first time, we show that removing of the phase regularity without changing the amplitude spectra of the input image induced a shift of eye dominance toward the deprived eye, but only if the eye dominance was measured with a binocular rivalry task rather than an interocular phase combination task. These different results indicate that the two measurements are supported by different mechanisms. Phase integration requires the fusion of monocular images. The fused percept highly relies on the weights of the phase-sensitive monocular neurons that respond to the two monocular images. However, binocular rivalry reflects the result of direct interocular competition that strongly weights the contour information transmitted along each monocular pathway. Monocular phase deprivation may not change the weights in the integration (fusion) mechanism much, but alters the balance in the rivalry (competition) mechanism. Our work suggests that ocular dominance plasticity may occur at different stages of visual processing, and that homeostatic compensation also occurs for the lack of phase regularity in natural scenes.
authors.affiliation: CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Beijing 100101, China.
authors.forename: Jianying
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Bai
authors.affiliation: CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Beijing 100101, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, China.
authors.forename: Xue
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Dong
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Beijing 100101, China; Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, United States.
authors.forename: Sheng
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: He
authors.affiliation: CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Beijing 100101, China; State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Beijing 100101, China. Electronic address: baom@psych.ac.cn.
authors.forename: Min
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bao
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D023882:Dominance, Ocular / Q000502:physiology*; D005074:Evoked Potentials, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005583:Fourier Analysis; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D012683:Sensory Deprivation / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: binocular rivalry; fourier phase; interocular phase combination; monocular deprivation; ocular dominance