Monocularly deprived cats: improvement of the deprived eye's vision by visual decortication.

Monocularly deprived cats were tested for visual perinetry before and after visual cortex lesions. Such a lesion greatly enhances the deprived eye's performance and impairs that of the nondeprived eye so that the pronounced preoperative interocular asymmetry is lost postoperatively. Apparently this destruction of abnormal corticotectal pathways allows the expression of previously suppressed, normal retinotectal pathways.