Blakemore and Cooper

• Brain plasticity is the process where the grey matter of the brain changes functionally and structurally.
• Blakemore and cooper were interesting in the brains of kittens as there was previous research to suggest that their brains adapt to the environment they are in and that their grey matter has a similar structure to humans brains.
• Hirsch and Spinelli showed that early visual experience can change the orientation of the visual cortex of kittens using a monocular method (one eye). Blakemore and Cooper wanted to expand on this by doing a binocular study.
• Blakemore and Cooper aimed to investigate the development of the primary visual cortex in cats to see if orientation selectivity is innate or learned.
• Blakemore and Cooper studied kittens in the critical period of their life (0 to 3 months) where their brains are most vulnerable to change.
• Procedure:

  1. Kittens were kept in completely dark room from birth,
  2. At 2 weeks, they were placed in a cylinder for 5 hours a day, the cylinder had a glass platform and vertical or horizontal black and white stripes,
  3. The kittens wore a collar that restricted their view to 130 degrees so they could not see their own body,
  4. The experiment was stopped at 5 months,
  5. The kittens were taken into a well lit normal room and their reactions were recorded,
  6. 2 kittens were anaesthetised so their brains could be analysed.
• Blakemore and Cooper found that:

  • Behavioural blindness was shown as kittens were blind to contours opposite to the stripes of their cylinder,
  • Kittens only played with a cat toy if it was moved in the same direction as the stripes of their cylinder,
  • Kittens raised in the vertical condition had problems with their cells firing responsible for recognising horizontal contours and vice versa.
• Blakemore and Cooper concluded that early visual experiences causes brain plasticity in cats and that environment can determine perception at a behavioural and physiological level.