COMPARISON OF THE EFFECTS OF UNILATERAL AND BILATERAL EYE CLOSURE ON CORTICAL UNIT RESPONSES IN KITTENS

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Abstract
If a kitten is raised from birth with one eye sutured closed, recordings from the visual cortex at 2-3 months show that very few cells can be driven from the deprived eye. From these results it was predicted that if animals were binocularly deprived for similar periods most of the striate cortex would be unresponsive to stimulation of either eye. To test this, the lids of both eyes were sutured together in 5 kittens shortly after the time of normal eye opening, and the animals raised in normal surroundings to an age of 2 1/2 - 4 1/2 months. Responses in single cells of the striate cortex were observed in 4 animals. Contrary to what had been expected, responsive cells were found throughout the greater part of all penetrations, and over half of these cells seemed perfectly normal. The cortex was nevertheless not normal in that many cells responded abnormally, and many were completely unresponsive. In the 5th kitten an eye was opened and vision tested. The pupillary response was normal but from its behavior the animal appeared to be blind. Histologically the lateral geniculate body showed atrophic changes similar to those found after monocular deprivation, but they occurred throughout all layers bilaterally. It thus appears that at the cortical level the results of closing 1 eye depend upon whether the other eye is also closed. The damage produced by monocular closure may therefore not be caused simply by disuse, but may instead depend to a large extent on interaction of the 2 pathways.

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