Visual recovery after monocular deprivation is driven by absolute, rather than relative, visually evoked activity levels

It is now well established that the anatomical and functional development of the central visual pathways of a number of higher mammalian species is activity-dependent [1-3]. This dependence was revealed by the functional effects of an early period of monocular deprivation, where one eye of a young animal was deprived for a time of patterned visual input. Subsequently, most cells in the visual cortex (area 17) could be excited only by visual stimuli delivered to the non deprived eye [4-6] and the animal appeared blind through the deprived eye [7,8]. These effects have been attributed to a competitive activity-dependent mechanism in development, whereby the two eyes compete for control of cortical cells [9,10]. There are, however, suggestions that the substantial recovery that can occur after monocular deprivation may be mediated by a different mechanism. Here, insight into the nature of this mechanism has been provided by monitoring the speed of changes in the vision of the deprived eye of a kitten after 6 days of monocular deprivation. Although both eyes were open during the recovery period, the kitten was able to see with its deprived eye only 2 hours after visual input was restored to this eye. The visual acuity of this eye improved rapidly in the first 24 hours and continued in an orderly way for 6 weeks. In contrast to the effects during monocular deprivation, which depend upon a competitive activity-dependent process, we propose that the events that follow deprivation rely on a mechanism driven by the absolute level of visually evoked activity through the formerly deprived eye.