Binocular deprivation can erase the effects of preceding monocular or binocular vision in kitten cortex

Kittens were given visual experience through one or both eyes for two weeks around the peak of the sensitive period. Subsequently they were binocularly deprived for at least one year. This period of pattern deprivation erased completely the effects of the preceding temporary experience. Ocular dominance distribution, orientation selectivity and response quality of the cortical units resembled those obtained from kittens which are contour-deprived throughout their early postnatal development. This suggests that the effect of visual experience is not to engrave irreversibly certain features of the early visual world, but to adapt the cortex continuously and in an integrative fashion to features which are prominent throughout the sensitive period.