Short-term monocular deprivation in healthy humans: a meta-analysis and new perspectives.
Proceedings. Biological sciences December 17, 2025 Cecilia Steinwurzel, Giacomo Pennella, Paola Binda
A meta-analysis of 73 studies confirms that a short period of monocular deprivation in healthy adults transiently shifts ocular dominance toward the deprived eye. The effect is reliable but varies in size, mainly due to deprivation duration and measurement technique, while being stable across different patching methods and eye selection. Similar shifts occur without deprivation, through distorting or making a monocular image task-irrelevant. These findings inform models of visual plasticity, suggesting that early visual processing remains plastic beyond developmental critical periods, with potential applications for recovery of visual functions.