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Recovery of binocular responses by cortical neurons after early monocular lesions

Abstract

A small lesion of the retina in one eye deprives normally binocular neurons in a sector of primary visual cortex of activating inputs from the lesioned eye, but not from the other, intact eye. Here we demonstrate that after monocular lesions early in life followed by years of recovery, deprived cortical neurons become robustly responsive to stimulation via new receptive fields in a zone of preserved retina around the retinal lesion, while maintaining receptive fields for the intact eye. These neurons respond similarly to comparable stimuli in two different locations, possibly producing a local diplopia or blur.

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Figure 1: Cortical reorganization after early monocular lesions.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the following NIH grants: EY-08128 (Y.C.), EY-03611 (E.L.S.), EY-07551 (C.O.R.E.) and EY- 02686 (J.H.K.). We thank D. Levi for comments on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Yuzo Chino.

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Chino, Y., Smith, E., Zhang, B. et al. Recovery of binocular responses by cortical neurons after early monocular lesions. Nat Neurosci 4, 689–690 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/89469

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