Short-term monocular deprivation strengthens the patched eye's contribution to binocular combination.

Binocularity is a fundamental property of primate vision. Ocular dominance describes the perceptual weight given to the inputs from the two eyes in their binocular combination. There is a distribution of sensory dominance within the normal binocular population with most subjects having balanced inputs while some are dominated by the left eye and some by the right eye. Using short-term monocular deprivation, the sensory dominance can be modulated as, under these conditions, the patched eye's contribution is strengthened. We address two questions: Is this strengthening a general effect such that it is seen for different types of sensory processing? And is the strengthening specific to pattern deprivation, or does it also occur for light deprivation? Our results show that the strengthening effect is a general finding involving a number of sensory functions, and it occurs as a result of both pattern and light deprivation.