Binocularity in prism-reared monkeys

Abstract

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.