Recovery of binocular responses after brief monocular deprivation in kittens

Monocular deprivation induces a rapid ocular dominance change in the developing visual cortex. The early phase of the change is supposed to be labile and stabilized later by consolidation processes. To test the stability of early ocular dominance change, we examined whether binocular responses of cortical neurons can recover after a brief monocular deprivation in anesthetized and paralyzed kittens in which ocular dominance plasticity does not operate. After the 24-h monocular deprivation, most cortical neurons lost their responses to the deprived eye. The deprived eye responses, however, recovered following 2-3 days interval under anesthetized and paralyzed conditions. Visual stimulation did not facilitate the recovery. These results suggest that the early phase of ocular dominance plasticity is labile and declines passively.