Mechanisms of binocular interaction in the visual cortex of rodents

New hypotheses are advanced relating to the functional role and mechanisms of interaction of afferentation from the two eyes in the visual cortex of animals with poorly developed binocular vision. The proposed approach sheds lights on a number of questions, particularly those concerning the relatively large level of disparity of the receptor fields in cortical neurons, the role of non-overlapping fibers in the visual tract, and others. Hypothesis relating to the evolutionary relationships between these mechanisms and the mechanisms of stereopsis are discussed.