Abstract
IN the nineteenth century there was a vigorous controversy over the role of visual experience in the development of stereoscopic depth perception1,2. Recent neurophysiological findings suggest that certain cells in the visual cortex of cats3,4, monkeys5 and sheep6 may provide the neural basis for stereopsis. Each cell is driven optimally by a stimulus at a certain distance from the animal, and different cells prefer different retinal disparities corresponding to objects at various distances. In cats, the neural pathways from the two eyes to individual cortical cells are labile and may be modified by visual deprivation during the first few weeks of life7–10. The visual cortex of the newborn kitten is immature and disparity selectivity appears only after exposure to a normal visual environment11. We find, however, that neither of these two conclusions is true of lambs.
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RAMACHANDRAN, V., CLARKE, P. & WHITTERIDGE, D. Cells selective to binocular disparity in the cortex of newborn lambs. Nature 268, 333–335 (1977). https://doi.org/10.1038/268333a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/268333a0
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