Interocular transfer of receptive field expansion in cat visual cortex.

Receptive fields in primary visual cortex have been shown to be capable of rapid expansion and contraction when exposed to an artificial scotoma, a masked segment of the visual field. To distinguish cortical from thalamic contributions to receptive field mutability, we tested interocular transfer of the effect in binocular cortical receptive fields, presenting the conditioning stimulus to the field in one eye and measuring size changes in the receptive field of the other eye. The expansion of the receptive fields in the non-conditioned eye was comparable to that in the conditioned eye. This result suggests that the expansion is due to mechanisms intrinsic to the cortex.