Looking behind a pathological blind spot in human retina

Recent work suggests that dichoptic lateral interactions occur in the region of the visual field of one eye that corresponds to the physiological blind spot in the other eye (Tripathy, S. P., & Levi, D. M. (1994). The two-dimensional shape of spatial interaction zones in the parafovea. Vision Research, 34, 1127-1138.) Here we ask whether dichoptic lateral interactions occur in the region of the visual field of one eye that corresponds to a pathological blind spot, a retinal coloboma in the other eye. To address this question we had the observer report the orientation of a letter 'T' presented within this region in the presence of flanking 'T's presented to the other eye around the coloboma. A large drop in performance was seen due to the flanks, showing the existence of dichoptic lateral interactions in this monocular region. The presence of these dichoptic interactions in a region lacking direct retinal afferents from one eye is consistent with the proposition that long-range horizontal connections of the primary visual cortex mediate these interactions.