Visually guided voluntary actions boost short-term ocular dominance plasticity

Short-term monocular deprivation transiently shifts ocular dominance in favor of the deprived eye. Here we asked whether the effect of a one-hour monocular deprivation was enhanced by the execution of a task requiring visually guided goal-directed actions, compared to a passive viewing condition where participants watched a replay of their own actions. Although the visual input was the same across conditions, we found a stronger ocular dominance shift when participants actively performed the task. These results provide strong evidence that voluntary, goal-directed actions modulate visual plasticity.