Monocular deafferentation effects on responsiveness of cortical cells in adult cats

Following chronic (2-3 months) unilateral eye enucleation in cats, an increase was found in the proportion of diffuse (5.4%), orientation bias (8.3%) and non-oriented (9.6%) receptive fields of cortical cells above the normal level. A reduction in small size receptive fields (< 0.8 sq. degrees) and in cells with the smallest (< 22.5 degrees) range of orientation was found in chronic cats in comparison to normal cats. Acute cats (enucleation 1 day before recording were either intermediately between chronic and normal cats, or were similar to the latter. The small differences found in receptive field organization, the relative absence of inactive cells and the normal organization of the orientation columns do not indicate a substantial change in the visual properties resulting from deafferentation.