For four decades, investigations of the biological basis of critical periods in the developing mammalian visual cortex were dominated by study of the consequences of altered early visual experience in cats and nonhuman primates. The neural deficits thus revealed also provided insight into the origin and neural basis of human amblyopia that in turn motivated additional studies of humans with abnormal early visual input. Recent human studies point to deficits arising from alterations in all visual cortical areas and even in nonvisual cortical regions. As the new human data accumulated in parallel with a near-complete shift toward the use of rodent animal models for the study of neural mechanisms, it is now essential to review the human data and the earlier animal data obtained from cats and monkeys to infer general conclusions and to optimize future choice of the most appropriate animal model.

中文翻译：

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重温愿景的关键时期

四十年来，对哺乳动物视觉皮层发育关键时期的生物学基础的研究主要是对猫和非人类灵长类动物早期视觉体验改变的后果的研究。由此揭示的神经缺陷还提供了对人类弱视的起源和神经基础的深入了解，这反过来又激发了对早期视觉输入异常的人类进行更多研究。最近的人类研究指出，所有视觉皮层区域甚至非视觉皮层区域的变化都会产生缺陷。随着新的人类数据的积累，同时几乎完全转向使用啮齿动物模型来研究神经机制，现在有必要回顾人类数据以及从猫和猴子获得的早期动物数据，以推断一般性的结论。结论并优化未来最合适的动物模型的选择。