IS THE RAPID VISUAL RECOVERY IN THE AMBLYOPIC EYE OF KITTENS FOLLOWING A SHORT PERIOD OF DARKNESS GUIDED BY VISUAL ACTIVITY IN THE NON-DEPRIVED EYE?

Abstract

Recent study has shown that 10-days of complete darkness imposed 2-months after monocular deprivation in kittens can provoke full and rapid recovery of vision in the deprived eye without affecting the acuity of the fellow eye (Duffy & Mitchell, 2013). This study determined whether the non-deprived eye and its vision played any critical role in dark-mediated amblyopic recovery. Four kittens were deprived of 1-week of monocular vision beginning at postnatal day 29. At 102 days of age, two kittens received 11-day period of reverse occlusion preceded by 10-days of complete dark exposure. The other animals were reverse occluded at equivalent age (P102) without prior exposure to darkness. The acuities for square-wave gratings were assessed on jumping stand. The extent and rate of recovery of vision for both groups of animals were very minimal. Thus, dark-mediated amblyopic visual recovery is largely guided by visually-driven neural activity of the non-deprived eye.