Early unilateral eye removal produces a regional gradient in soma sizes in the uncrossed projection from the remaining eye.

Early unilateral eye removal reduces natural cell death within the population of ipsilaterally projecting ganglion cells in the remaining eye. Here it is shown that there is a gradient in the soma sizes of cells which survive as a consequence of this manipulation. The additional ipsilateral projection from the far temporal retina arises mainly from cells with medium-to-large somas. Those located on the nasal side of the optic disk have small somas, while those located between the optic disk and the naso-temporal division arise from predominantly small cells whose soma sizes are intermediate between those which are located in the more nasal and more temporal regions.