Competition and orientation-dependent recovery from monocular deprivation in the kitten's striate cortex.

Kittens were monocularly deprived for 10 days; then the deprived eye was opened and both eyes exposed to vertical contours by means of cylindrical lenses. Single unit recording in area 17 showed a clear preponderance of neurons with vertical orientation preference, but only limited recovery of the eye which was totally deprived in the beginning. Interocular competition combined with Hebb synapses, as postulated previously, appears sufficient to explain these results.