Behavioral and physiological effects of monocular deprivation: a comparison of rearing with diffusion and occlusion

To compare the effects of monocular deprivation produced by occlusion and diffusion, 9 cats were reared in the dark from birth to 4 weeks of age, when they were brought out for periods of exposure with one eye covered. For 3 cats, the left eye was covered with a white diffuser while the right eye received 8 h of normal patterned exposure (MD/D-8). For 2 cats, the left eye was covered with a black occluder while the right eye was exposed for 8 h (MD/O-8), and for 4 cats, the right eye was covered with a black occluder while the left eye was exposed for 1 h (MD/O-1). Monocular exposure continued until the cats were 3 months old, when they began receiving binocular exposure. For all cats, the visual field of the exposed eye was normal. For the MD/D cats, the field of the pattern-deprived eye was restricted to the monocular crescent, and resembled the fields of monocularly lid-sutured cats. In contrast, for the MD/O cats, the field of the pattern-deprived eye was much larger, extending nearly to the midline. Thus, monocular diffusion produced more restricted visual fields than did monocular occlusion. Preliminary physiological data from the MD/D-8 and MD/O-8 cats showed that more cortical cells responded to stimulation of the pattern-deprived eye in the MD/O-8 cats than in the MD/D-8 cats. Taken together with our earlier results on cats reared with unequal patterned input to the two eyes, these results further suggest that there is a temporal-to-nasal gradient in sensitivity to the effects of an imbalance in stimulation to the two eyes.