Development of cat visual cortex following rotation of one eye

EVER since the first description of the optical inversion of images within the vertebrate eye, philosophers and psychologists have pondered the question of how animals interpret the directions of objects in space. The physiological discovery of retinotopic 'maps' in the brain (such that the retina is represented in an orderly array in the tectal¹ and cortical ² visual areas) seemed to provide an answer to the question. Neurones in these visual centres have receptive fields that are restricted to a particular region of the retina and could therefore preserve information concerning the positions of objects in the visual world. © 1975 Nature Publishing Group.