Development of retinal and cortical responses to pattern reversal in infants: a selective review.

Infant contrast sensitivity and visual acuity evaluated by recording steady-state visual evoked potentials (VEP) in response to sinusoidal gratings improve considerably during the first 6 months of life. Qualitatively similar findings are obtained in kittens 3-12 weeks old. In infants, the improvement in VEP acuity with age parallels the increase in retinal acuity estimated from electroretinographic (ERG) steady-state responses to sinusoidal gratings. Spatial frequency selective mechanisms with bandwidth substantially narrower than the overall contrast sensitivity function seem to be present in the visual system of very young infants. These findings are compared with data reported in the literature about the development of the cat and monkey visual system.