Interocular transfer of a visual after-effect in normal and stereoblind humans.

Abstract

1. Following inspection of a high contrast grating a test grating of a slightly different orientation will briefly appear rotated from its true orientation in a direction opposite to that of the adapting grating.2. The extent of interocular transfer of this phenomenon (the tilt after-effect) was measured in a number of normal subjects and in four subjects (three of whom had a strabismus) who lacked stereopsis.3. In contrast to the normal subjects, none of the four stereoblind subjects showed any interocular transfer of the tilt after-effect. Amongst the normal subjects the extent of transfer of this after-effect was positively correlated with the subject's stereoacuity. Maximum transfer (70%) was found in the subject with the best stereoacuity. In many subjects transfer was greater from the dominant eye to the non-dominant eye than vice versa.4. By analogy with experiments on cats deprived of congruent visual input to the two eyes early in life it is argued that the stereoblind subjects lack any binocularly driven cortical neurones.