Monocular deprivation is an experimental technique used by neuroscientists to study central nervous system plasticity.
Generally, one of an animal's eyes is sutured shut during a period of high cortical plasticity (4–5 weeks-old in mice (Gordon 1997)).
David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel (who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology for their elucidation of receptive field properties of cells in primary visual cortex) first performed the technique in felines.
Light areas represent V1 neurons receiving input from an eye which has been injected with radioactive amino acid.
The ocular dominance columns do not show results of being disturbed even after the adult cat has had one of its eyes shut for over a year.