Failure of Interocular Transfer of Brightness Discrimination

Abstract

EXPERIMENTAL evidence has now established that, with food reward training and testing, an intact corpus callosum is necessary to mediate the interocular transfer of most visual pattern discriminations in cats^1,2 and monkeys³ with mid-sagittal section of the optic chiasm. In these animals with surgical interruption of both the optic chiasm and the corpus callosum, visual pattern discriminations learned initially through one eye must be relearned when the untrained eye is tested alone. On the other hand, the interocular transfer of a simple brightness or flux discrimination is apparently complete in these same cats⁴ and monkeys⁵ with mid-sagittal section of both the optic chiasm and the corpus callosum. Since these latter results suggest that commissures other than the corpus callosum can mediate the transfer of this type of visual learning, this experiment was designed to attempt to prevent the interocular transfer of a simple brightness or flux discrimination by sectioning other forebrain and midbrain commissures in addition to the optic chiasm and the corpus callosum.