Researchers have discovered that the retina’s visual pathways are far more interconnected than previously thought, overturning the long-held view that they operate independently.
The findings suggest this hidden communication network – coordinated by a newly identified “commander” cell – helps the eye to detect faint objects and improves vision in low-light conditions.
Research from Yale School of Medicine, published in Neuron,1 found that information travelling through the retina is shared between visual pathways via electrical connections, rather than remaining confined to separate channels.
Vision begins with the rods and cones in the retinas. These detect light and transmit signals to a type of neuron called bipolar cells. In these cells, visual components such as night, day, colour, shape, and contrast separate into more than a dozen parallel channels.
But when researchers examined bipolar cell synapses, they found these information channels intermingle.
“We found that while different channels can deliver their own features, they’re also interconnected by underlying electrical circuitry,” said Dr Yao Xue from Yale School of Medicine and the study’s first author.2
This may help cells process weak visual signals, such as low-light conditions, the researchers said.
Crosstalk Among Cells
Neurons have two types of synapses – chemical and electrical. Bipolar cells primarily communicate through chemical synapses. However, using mouse and human retinas, when the scientists electrically stimulated one bipolar cell, instead of seeing a localised release of neurotransmitters just within that cell’s channel, they observed cloud-like patterns of signalling, suggesting crosstalk among the different types of cells.
“When we stimulated one bipolar cell, many bipolar cells released neurotransmitters,” said principal investigator, Professor Z Jimmy Zhou.
They also identified one type of bipolar cell, called BC6, that acted as a commander, driving this signalling. “People had assumed that the different types of bipolar cells were more or less autonomous,” Prof Zhou said. “But we found a driver among all these cell types that creates this network with a hierarchy.”
The Yale School of Medicine researchers used a new technique to work on fully intact mouse and human retinas, rather than slicing them to access the bipolar cells,
“No other lab in the world has been able to pull off these kinds of recordings systematically,” Prof Zhou said. “It is a tour de force of Yao Xue’s PhD thesis work, pairing an innovative approach with exceptional electrophysiological skill.”
References
- Yao Xue, Yue Fei, Jimmy Zhou, et al. A hierarchical electrical synaptic circuit mechanism for integrative parallel visual processing in the retina. Neuron, 2026;114(9):1651. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2025.12.042.
- Backman I. Surprising finding in the eye may explain how we see in low light, Yale School of Medicine News, available at: medicine.yale.edu/news-article/surprising-finding-in-eye-may-explain-how-we-see-in-low-light [accessed July 2026].
