Approaching a connectome of the human foveal retina
8 affiliations
- 1Department of Neurobiology and Biophysics, University of Washington
- 2Zetta AI
- 3Department of Ophthalmology, Medical University of Vienna
- 4Department of Ophthalmology and Vision Sciences, University of Alabama at Birmingham
- 5Aware LLC
- 6Department of Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania
- 7Faculty of Medicine and Health, Save Sight Institute and Discipline of Ophthalmology, The University of Sydney
- 8Washington National Primate Research Center
Abstract
The foveal retina is a unique primate specialization and a promising target for the first connectome of a human central nervous system structure. In the fovea, neural cells and circuits are miniaturized and compressed to sample the visual image at high spatial resolution, initiating form, color, and motion perception. Here, we report a working-draft human foveal connectome. We used deep learning to segment all cells and their synaptic connections in a piece of human fovea. We classified ~3,000 cells into 51 neuronal types and three glial types based on morphology and connectivity. Some cell types and synaptic motifs—including the midget and small bistratified ganglion cell circuits—are conserved between human and nonhuman primates. However, most other cell types and related synaptic connectivity remain unexplored. We find that in comparison to peripheral retina, the human foveal retina shows reduced cell type diversity with markedly unequal densities and distinct patterns of synaptic connectivity. For example, foveal H1 horizontal cells are present at high density relative to H2 cells and receive unexpected synaptic input from S cones, predicting fovea-specific chromatic properties of downstream receptive fields. Retinal ganglion cells could be divided into only 13 types—a contrast to the ~20 types in peripheral retina and the 40+ types recognized in mouse retina—but consistent with recent transcriptomic studies of human fovea. These findings support the hypothesis that the human fovea has traded a repertoire of feature detectors for high-precision, saccade-supported active vision centered around a small number of high-density visual pathways.
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BibTeX
@article{kim2026approaching,
title = {{Approaching a connectome of the human foveal retina}},
author = {Yeon Jin Kim and ORIN S. PACKER and Thomas Macrina and Andreas Pollreisz and Christine A. Curcio and Kisuk Lee and Nico Kemnitz and Dodam Ih and Tri Nguyen and Ran Lu and Sergiy Popovych and Akhilesh Halageri and Junhwan Alexander Bae and Joseph Strout and Stephan Gerhard and Robert G. Smith and Paul R. Martin and Ulrike Grünert and Dennis M. Dacey},
journal = {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences},
year = {2026},
month = aug,
doi = {10.1073/pnas.2603286123},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2603286123},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Approaching a connectome of the human foveal retina
AU - Yeon Jin Kim
AU - ORIN S. PACKER
AU - Thomas Macrina
AU - Andreas Pollreisz
AU - Christine A. Curcio
AU - Kisuk Lee
AU - Nico Kemnitz
AU - Dodam Ih
AU - Tri Nguyen
AU - Ran Lu
AU - Sergiy Popovych
AU - Akhilesh Halageri
AU - Junhwan Alexander Bae
AU - Joseph Strout
AU - Stephan Gerhard
AU - Robert G. Smith
AU - Paul R. Martin
AU - Ulrike Grünert
AU - Dennis M. Dacey
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/08/11
JO - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
DO - 10.1073/pnas.2603286123
UR - https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2603286123
AB - The foveal retina is a unique primate specialization and a promising target for the first connectome of a human central nervous system structure. In the fovea, neural cells and circuits are miniaturized and compressed to sample the visual image at high spatial resolution, initiating form, color, and motion perception. Here, we report a working-draft human foveal connectome. We used deep learning to segment all cells and their synaptic connections in a piece of human fovea. We classified ~3,000 cells into 51 neuronal types and three glial types based on morphology and connectivity. Some cell types and synaptic motifs—including the midget and small bistratified ganglion cell circuits—are conserved between human and nonhuman primates. However, most other cell types and related synaptic connectivity remain unexplored. We find that in comparison to peripheral retina, the human foveal retina shows reduced cell type diversity with markedly unequal densities and distinct patterns of synaptic connectivity. For example, foveal H1 horizontal cells are present at high density relative to H2 cells and receive unexpected synaptic input from S cones, predicting fovea-specific chromatic properties of downstream receptive fields. Retinal ganglion cells could be divided into only 13 types—a contrast to the ~20 types in peripheral retina and the 40+ types recognized in mouse retina—but consistent with recent transcriptomic studies of human fovea. These findings support the hypothesis that the human fovea has traded a repertoire of feature detectors for high-precision, saccade-supported active vision centered around a small number of high-density visual pathways.
SN - 0027-8424
SN - 1091-6490
ER -