Optical imaging of intrinsic signal is used to measure ocular dominance plasticity in recombinant inbred strains and strains in which gene mutations have been introduced by transgenesis, gene targeting or random mutagenesis. These reverse- and forward genetics approaches are combined with genomic approaches allowing the identification of novel genes involved in plasticity in the visual cortex. This work is carried out as part of the Neuro-Bsik mouse phenomics consortium.