Loss of Binocular Vision in Monocularly Blind Patients Causes Selective Degeneration of the Superior Lateral Occipital Cortices

Chronic ocular pathology, such as glaucoma and macular degeneration, is associated with neuroanatomic changes in the visual pathways. It is a challenge to determine the mechanism responsible for these changes. This could be functional deprivation or transsynaptic degeneration. Acquired monocular blindness provides a unique opportunity to establish which mechanism underlies neuroanatomic changes in ocular pathology in general, since the loss of input is well defined, and it causes selective functional deprivation due to the loss of stereopsis. Here, we assessed whether acquired monocular blindness is associated with neuroanatomic changes, and if so, where these changes are located.