DIFFERENTIAL SPARING OF DEPTH-PERCEPTION, ORIENTING, AND OPTOKINETIC NYSTAGMUS AFTER NEONATAL VERSUS ADULT LESIONS OF CORTICAL AREA-17, AREA-18, AND AREA-19 IN THE CAT

Performance by cats with lesions of the visual cortex made in infancy or adulthood was examined on tasks of visually guided behavior that do not require specific training. Cats with lesions confined to areas 17 , 18, and 19 made during the 1st postnatal week showed more sparing of function on a visual cliff, at orienting to targets suddenly appearin g in the visual field, and at optokinetic nystagmus than did cats with equivalent damage incurred as adults. Cats with lesions that included areas 17, 18, 19 and most of the contiguous visual areas were severel y impaired at all tasks whether the lesions were incurred neonatally o r in adulthood. These findings suggest that sparing of vision after ne onatal lesions of cortical areas 17, 18, and 19 is not confined to pat tern learning tasks and that remaining lateral cortical visual areas a re importantly involved in such sparing.