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Updated: Jul 10, 2026

How to Create and Use Binocular Rivalry
Published on: November 10, 2010
Mesoscale developmental rivalry in the human extrastriate visual cortex
Shahin Nasr1,2, Jan Skerswetat3,4, Bryan Kennedy1
1Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA 02129.
None:
The human extrastriate visual cortex contains fine-scale columns selectively responsive to motion, disparity, and color. However, the developmental interplay between these functional modules remains poorly understood. Using high-resolution functional MRI, we compared the mesoscale organization of the extrastriate cortex in 16 individuals with normal vision and 15 participants with amblyopia (PwA) caused by strabismus (n = 8) or anisometropia (n = 7). In controls, the cortical territory occupied by disparity-selective columns exhibited a competitive relationship with that of motion- and color-selective columns. In PwA, we witnessed a reduction in the size of disparity-selective columns accompanied by expansion of the cortical territory allocated to motion- and color-selective columns, while the interdigitated organization of these sites remained unchanged. At the macroscale, this phenomenon simply manifested as weaker disparity- plus stronger motion- and color-selective responses in PwA than controls. Our results show that the mesoscale modules are rivals in development allowing intact functions to usurp those that are compromised.
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