Motor and sensory fusion in monkeys: psychophysical measurements

Motor and sensory fusion, the basic processes of binocularity, must be present for bifoveal fixation with true fusion and stereopsis during ordinary viewing. The characteristics of motor and sensory fusion have been established for patients with normal and subnormal binocular vision; the present report describes our psychophysical studies of these processes in the macaque monkey. Three recent investigations of motor and sensory fusion in monkeys are described. The studies involved: (1) the comparability of motor and sensory fusion in monkeys and humans with normal binocular vision, (2) the effects of an early period of abnormal binocular vision on motor and sensory fusion in monkeys, and (3) the contrast sensitivity for binocular disparity in monkeys with stereo-deficiencies. The results of these studies demonstrated an excellent homology between the normal binocular vision of monkeys and humans. We also found that a period of esotropia during infancy caused deficiencies in sensory fusion, but not motor fusion. In some monkeys, the sensory deficiency persisted over the entire range of binocular disparities that were compatible with stereopsis, while other subjects demonstrated normal stereo-sensitivity for the largest fusible binocular disparities. The stereo-deficiencies of these monkeys, along with other visual attributes, suggest that their binocular vision is a viable model for the binocularity of patients with subnormal binocular vision or the monofixation syndrome.