Effects of alternating occlusion on receptive fields in cat superior colliculus

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Abstract
To explain the different effects of artificial strabismus on cat visual cortex and superior colliculus (SC) the effects of alternating monocular occlusion and a combination of alternating occlusion and strabismus were studied on the SC. In both strabismic cats and cats reared with alternating occlusion, many collicular cells remained binocularly driven. Therefore, synchronous binocular input was not required for binocularity in the SC. In the strabismic cats the SC contralateral to the normal eye was dominated by that eye. The notion was tested that binocular competition is involved in this effect by rearing cats with both alternating occlusion and strabismus, forcing the animals to use the strabismic eye on alternating days. In these animals the SC contralateral to the normal eye remained binocularly driven. Alternating occlusion cats showed an increase in the number of SC cells preferring vertical stimulus movement. This result was difficult to interpret because it was not certain that alternating occlusion cats had normal horizontal eye movements.