Push-pull training reduces foveal sensory eye dominance within the early visual channels

A push-pull training protocol is applied to reduce sensory eye dominance in the foveal region. The training protocol consists of cueing the weak eye to force it to become dominant while the strong eye is suppressed when a pair of dichoptic orthogonal grating stimulus is subsequently presented to it (Ooi & He, 1999). We trained with four pairs of dichoptic orthogonal gratings (0 degrees/90 degrees, 90 degrees/0 degrees, 45 degrees/135 degrees and 135 degrees/45 degrees at 3 cpd) to affect the interocular inhibitory interaction tuned to the four trained orientations (0 degrees, 45 degrees, 90 degrees and 135 degrees). After a 10-day training session, we found a significant learning effect (reduced sensory eye dominance) at the trained orientations as well as at two other untrained orientations (22.5 degrees and 67.5 degrees). This suggests that the four pairs of oriented training stimuli are sufficient to produce a learning effect at any other orientation. The nearly complete transfer of the learning effect across orientation is attributed to the fact that the trained and untrained orientations are close enough to fall in the same orientation tuning function of the early visual cortical neurons (similar to 37.5 degrees). Applying the same notion of transfer of learning within the same feature channel, we also found a large transfer effect to an untrained spatial frequency (6 cpd), which is 1 octave higher than the trained spatial frequency (3 cpd). Furthermore, we found that stereopsis is improved, as is the competitive ability between the two eyes, after the push-pull training. Our data analysis suggests that these improvements are correlated with the reduced sensory eye dominance after the training, i.e., due to a more balanced interocular inhibition. We also found that the learning effect (reduced SED and stereo threshold) can be retained for more than a year after the termination of the push-pull training. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.