Experience-dependent mechanism of binocular map plasticity in Xenopus: incongruent connections are masked by retinal input

When one eye in larval Xenopus is rotated to change the orientation of its visual map on the contralateral tectum, the map from the other eye to the same tectum can subsequently alter its orientation to match the rotated input. This plasticity re-establishes binocular congruence between the two maps and involves an experience-dependent reorganization of functional connections in the crossed isthmotectal projection, which delivers the ipsilateral eye's map to the tectum. Here, recordings were made at the same tectal sites in 8 eye-rotated frogs immediately before and after removing the rotated retina. All had congruent binocular maps prior to enucleation, with matching receptive fields in the two eyes at each recording site. In 5 frogs, eye removal unmasked additional, incongruent receptive fields in the ipsilateral eye, recorded from previously undetectable crossed isthmotectal connections occupying their original positions in the tectum. This result suggests that the plasticity also involves functional suppression of binocularly-incongruent inputs from the ipsilateral eye by retinotectal afferents.