TABLE OF CONTENTS The best demonstration of plasticity in visual cortex is provided by deprivation experiments in which input to cortex are disrupted by some artificial manipulation. It has been shown already by Hubel and Wiesel [Wiesel and Hubel, 1962] that such manipulations can alter receptive fields of cortical neurons. The best examples are those in which the binocular properties of neurons are altered by depriving one of the eyes of normal visual inputs. In this section we examine what the effect is of such deprivation experiments on a PCA neuron. We discuss the following conditions:
Normal Rearing ( NR), The baseline condition in which animals are reared normally with both eyes open. This results in an ocular dominance histogram in which most cells are driven by both eyes.
Monocular Deprivation ( MD) Inputs from one eye are altered. This is typically done by suturing the eye lid: a procedure that results in shifting the ocular dominance histogram so the most cells become dominated by the open eye.
Reverse Suture ( RS). This procedure follows MD; the previously sutured eye is opened and the other eye is sutured. This results in reversing the effect of MD -most cells become dominated by newly opened eye.
Binocular Deprivation ( BD). Both eyes are sutured - this results in a slow loss of orientation selectivity. This processes is much slower than MD.
In this section we use the Wyatt solution...
