Maturation of mechanisms for efficient spatial vision

One of the most remarkable achievements of the human visual system is the capacity to resolve fine detail in the retinal image and efficiently to detect contrast between neighbouring regions of the image. In the central visual field these perceptual abilities appear to be limited by the physical properties of the photoreceptors themselves. The development of spatial vision provides a fine example of the way in which the efficiency of coding in the visual system emerges through an interplay between innate (presumably genetically determined) organization and plasticity of synaptic organization at the level of the visual cortex. As Barlow (1972) pointed out, developmental plasticity might allow the visual cortex to discover, in the pattern of stimulation it receives, important associations and coincidences in the retinal image that relate to the nature of the visual world.