DEVELOPMENT OF STEREOSCOPIC MECHANISMS IN THE VISUAL-CORTEX OF THE CAT

It is argued that those neural systems (such as that responsible for stereoscopic vision) that have the greatest precision of operation are the most likely, during their developmental construction, to take advantage of information supplied by their own input. There is evidence that binocuarly driven neurons in the kitten's visual cortex do indeed become modified in their synaptic organization during early visual experience in a manner that enhances the specificity of binocular interaction and ensures that the ranges of positional and orientational disparities of the receptive fields, within limits, become matched to the nature of the actual stimulation encountered by the animal.