Visual Neuroscience

Francesca Cordeiro
Professor Francesca Cordeiro is a clinical scientist, and the head of the “Glaucoma and Retinal Neurodegeneration Research Group” at the Institute of Ophthalmology. Her research focuses on molecular mechanisms involved in the pathogenesis and treatment of retinal diseases such as glaucoma, and looks at retinal degeneration in diseases such as Alzheimer’s and diabetes. The aims of the Glaucoma and Retinal Neurodegeneration research group are to improve early diagnoses and identification of blinding conditions, by providing innovate imaging tools such as DARC, and to promote the eye as a window to neurodegeneration, particularly in Alzheimer’s disease. The group uses techniques to  to assess structural and functional changes in different models of disease and their treatment, with a view to offering quick and effective translation to the clinical arena.  
Publications
•    Cordeiro, M. F., Hill, D., Patel, R., Corazza, P., Maddison, J., & Younis, S. (2022). 'Detecting retinal cell stress and apoptosis with DARC: Progression from lab to clinic', in Progress in retinal and eye research, 86, 100976. 

•    Cordeiro, M. F., Normando, E. M., Cardoso, M. J., Miodragovic, S., Jeylani, S., Davis, B. M., Guo, L., Ourselin, S., A'Hern, R., & Bloom, P. A. (2017). 'Real-time imaging of single neuronal cell apoptosis in patients with glaucoma', in Brain: a journal of neurology, 140(6), 1757–1767. 

•    Normando, E.M., Davis, B.M., De Groef, L. et al. 'The retina as an early biomarker of neurodegeneration in a rotenone-induced model of Parkinson’s disease: evidence for a neuroprotective effect of rosiglitazone in the eye and brain', in Acta Neuropathologica Communications 4, 86 (2016). 

Roni Maimon Mor
Dr Roni Maimon Mor is a Research Fellow at the “Child Vision Lab” within the Institute of Ophthalmology. Her research focuses on neuroplasticity following sensory deprivation and restoration. Roni studies visual augmentation, visual impairment, and the  effects of sight-rescue therapy as a brain adaptation process, and investigates how these unfold at different levels of computations, processes and behaviour.

Publications
•    Maimon-Mor Roni O, Farahbakhsh Mahtab, Hedger Nicholas, Rider Andrew T, Anderson Elaine J, Rees Geraint, Knapen Tomas, Michaelides Michel, Dekker Tessa M (2024) 'Hierarchical cortical plasticity in congenital sight impairment', eLife 13:RP100404

•    Stäubli, K. E., Pabst, M., O Maimon-Mor, R., Rodriguez-Martinez, A. C., Scholte, H. S., Moosajee, M., & Dekker, T. M. (2026). 'Using Steady-State Visual Evoked Potentials to Characterize Wide-Ranging Retinopathy Linked to CRB1: Implications for Clinical Trials', Computational and structural biotechnology journal, 35(1), 0042. 

•    T.M. Dekker, & R.O. Maimon-Mor, (2025). 'How infants look shapes what they learn', PNAS U.S.A. 122 (20) e2505492122, 

Yukun Zhou
Publications
•    Zhou, Y., Chia, M.A., Wagner, S.K. et al. 'A foundation model for generalizable disease detection from retinal images', Nature 622, 156–163 (2023).

•    Yukun Zhou, Siegfried K. Wagner, Mark A. Chia, An Zhao, Peter Woodward-Court, Moucheng Xu, Robbert Struyven, Daniel C. Alexander, Pearse A. Keane; AutoMorph: Automated Retinal Vascular Morphology Quantification Via a Deep Learning Pipeline, in translational vision science & technology 2022; 11(7):12. 

•    Ninomiya, T., Hanyuda, A., Kiyota, N., Sharma, P., Zhou, Y., Wagner, S. K., Suzuki, K., Nozaki, T., Miya, T., Takahashi, N., Omodaka, K., Himori, N., Ichikawa, Y., Keane, P. A., & Nakazawa, T. (2026). 'High-accuracy retinal age prediction via fundus-based multitask learning reveals the effect of systemic disease', in Communications medicine

Andy Rider
Dr Andy Rider is a Senior Research Fellow in the Colour and Cognitive Research Laboratory. He has made significant contributions to a series of projects that measure and model visual responses to flicker and colour. Dr Rider’s work focuses on applying psychophysical techniques and mathematical modelling to gene therapy and eye movement, and understanding visual processing in the human retina. He is particularly interested in how the complex network of neurons in the retina extract and encode the visual information required for colour vision, and the light adaptive changes that affect the dynamic light response across the enormous range of intensities to which we are exposed.
Publications
•    Andrew T. Rider and Andrew Stockman, 'Importance of individual differences in cone spectral sensitivities and color matching functions and how to correct for them: tutorial', in Journal of the Optical Society of America A 43, 135-151 (2026) 
•    Keyu Shi, Ming Ronnier Luo, Andrew T Rider, Siyuan Song, Tingwei Huang, and Andrew Stockman, 'Individual color matches and cone spectral sensitivities in 100 observers of varying age',  Opt. Express 32, 48051-48071 (2024) 
•    Makam, Rahul MBChB, BMedSc(Hons); Rider, Andrew T. BA, MSc, MRes, PhD; Yu-Wai-Man, Patrick BMedSci, MBBS, PhD, FRCPath, FRCOphth; Gilhooley, Michael J. MA, MB, BChir, DPhil, FRCOphth. 'Retinal Ganglion Cell Diversity in Disease: Clinical Implications and Type-Specific Evaluation', Journal of Neuro-Ophthalmology 45(3):p 350-361, September 2025. | DOI: 

Matteo Carandini
Professor Matteo Carandini is a Fight for Sight Professor of Visual Neuroscience in the IoO and founding member of the International Brain Laboratory.  He runs the Cortexlab with Professor Kenneth Harris. His work focuses on understanding how the brain processes sensory signals and integrates them with internal signals to guide decision and action. The goal of the lab is to understand these processes at the level of large populations of individual neurons. The lab aims to investigate these questions using advanced experimental techniques and computational analysis.
Publications
•   ' The basal ganglia transform visual identity into behavioral relevance', Julie MJ Fabre, Matteo Carandini, Andrew J Peters, Kenneth D Harris bioRxiv 2026.04.07.716881; doi: 

•    Sophie Skriabine, Maxwell Shinn, Samuel Picard, Kenneth D. Harris, Matteo Carandini; 'Mapping the visual cortex with Zebra noise and wavelets', Journal of Vision 2026;26(1):1. 

•    Landemard, A., Krumin, M., Harris, K.D. et al. Brainwide blood volume reflects opposing neural populations. Nature (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10350-9

Matteo Rizzi
•    Reinhard, Katja & Powell, Kate & Rizzi, Matteo. (2025). 'Beyond night vision: the expanding role of rod photoreceptors in bright light', Vision research. 240. 108744. 

•    Rizzi, M., Powell, K., Robinson, M.R. et al. 'Lateral gain is impaired in macular degeneration and can be targeted to restore vision in mice', Nature Communications 13, 2159 (2022). 

•    Nishiguchi, K., Carvalho, L., Rizzi, M. et al. 'Gene therapy restores vision in rd1 mice after removal of a confounding mutation in Gpr179', Nature Communications 6, 6006 (2015). 

Tessa Dekker
Professor Tessa Dekker is the lead of the “Child Vision Lab” at UCL, which takes an interdisciplinary approach to studying human vision and eye disease from a developmental neuroscience perspective. The Child Vision Lab studies the development of vision in children, from infancy into adolescence – using brain imaging, virtual reality, and computer games. The lab develops novel eye tests to use in young children, helping to diagnose and prevent serious eye conditions early on, and investigates mental health and wellbeing in young people with visual impairments. 
Publications
•    Michel Michaelides, Yannik Laich, Sui Chien Wong, Ngozi Oluonye, Serena Zaman, Neruban Kumaran, Angelos Kalitzeos, Harry Petrushkin, Michalis Georgiou, Vijay Tailor, Marc Pabst, Kim Staeubli, Roni O Maimon-Mor, Peter R Jones, Steven H Scholte, Anastasios Georgiadis, Jacqueline van der Spuy, Stuart Naylor, Alexandria Forbes, Tessa M Dekker, Eugene R Arulmuthu, Alexander J Smith, Robin R Ali, James W B Bainbridge, (2025) 'Gene therapy in children with AIPL1-associated severe retinal dystrophy: an open-label, first-in-human interventional study',  The Lancet, Volume 405, Issue 10479, Pages 648-657, 

•    Shenyan, O., Haye, L., Milne, G. A., Lisi, M., Greenwood, J. A., Skipper, J. I., & Dekker, T. M. (2025). 'Reduced susceptibility to experimentally-induced complex visual hallucinations with age', Cortex, a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior, 191, 188–204. 

•    Ana Catalina Rodriguez-Martinez, Vijay K. Tailor-Hamblin, Bethany E. Higgins, Pete R. Jones, Tessa M. Dekker, Robert H. Henderson, John A. Greenwood, Mariya Moosajee; 'Elevated Visual Crowding in CRB1-Associated Retinopathies: Understanding Functional Visual Deficits Using Child-Friendly Computerized Testing', Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Neuroscience, 2025;66(5):32. 

Sam Solomon
Professor Samuel Solomon is a professor of Visual Neuroscience and Experimental Psychology. He is interested in looking at how the eye and brain analyses the visual brain and supports visual perception, particularly how visual perception reflects the basic properties of networks and nerve cells at each level of the visual pathway. The work of Professor Solomon’s lab focuses on understanding at the level of individual neurons how sensory signals interact with internal representations. They are interested in developing model systems to both give insight into complex brain functions and how they are altered in neural disorders, and to use predictions from these models to develop new tests for human cognition in health and disease.
Publications
•    Zucca, S., Schulz, A., Gonçalves, P. J., Macke, J. H., Saleem, A. B., & Solomon, S. G. (2025). 'Visual loom caused by self-movement or object-movement elicits distinct responses in mouse superior colliculus', Current biology : CB, 35(17), 4241–4250.e4. 

•    Samuel G. Solomon, Hadrien Janbon, Adam Bimson, Thomas Wheatcroft; 'Visual spatial location influences selection of instinctive behaviours in mouse', Royal Society Open Science, 1 April 2023; 10 (4): 230034.

•    Papanikolaou, A., Rodrigues, F.R., Holeniewska, J. et al. 'Plasticity in visual cortex is disrupted in a mouse model of tauopathy', Communications Biology, 5, 77 (2022). 

Michael Crossland
Dr Michael Crossland is a Senior Research Fellow in the Child Vision Lab, and a Principal Optometrist in the Low Vision Clinic at Moorfields Eye Hospital. His research focuses on children and adults with vision impairment. He is particularly interested in how sight loss affects well-being and mental health and in how technology can overcome activity limitation in people with low vision. He is the chief investigator on the STOMP project (Supporting Teenagers to Overcome Macular Problems).
Publications
•    Stalin, A., Miller, A., van der Aa, H. et al. 'The Evolving Landscape of Vision Rehabilitation: Current Status and Future Directions',  (2026). 

•    Crossland, M.D., Tibber, M.S., Wood, L.A.G. et al. 'Loneliness and Mental Wellbeing in People With Inherited Macular Disease', Ophthalmic and Physiological Optics (2026). 

•    Miller, A., Crossland, M. D., Macnaughton, J., & Latham, K. (2025). The Usefulness of a Wearable Electronic Vision Enhancement System for People With Age-Related Macular Degeneration: A Randomized Crossover Trial, Translational vision science & technology, 14(9), 8.

Aman Saleem
Professor Aman Saleem is the lead of the Saleem lab at UCL.  The main focus of the lab is to understand how the brain uses visual information for active behaviour such as navigation. The lab uses a combination of experimental and computational approaches to investigate brain function. Their main experimental techniques include large-scale extracellular electrophysiology including acute and chronic neuropixel recordings, two-photon imaging, virtual and augmented reality, rodent behaviour and optogenetic manipulation of neural activity. 
Publications
•    Saleem, A.B., Diamanti, E.M., Fournier, J. et al. Coherent encoding of subjective spatial position in visual cortex and hippocampus. Nature 562, 124–127 (2018). 

•    Saleem, A., Ayaz, A., Jeffery, K. et al. 'Integration of visual motion and locomotion in mouse visual cortex'. Nat Neurosci 16, 1864–1869 (2013). 

•    Horrocks, E. A. B., & Saleem, A. B. (2025). 'Locomotion selectively enhances visual speed encoding in mouse medial higher visual areas'. iScience, 29(1), 114395. 

Jennifer Sun
Dr Jennifer Sun leads the Visual Plasticity lab at the IoO. The lab is interested in neuroplasticity in the visual systems, using a combination of genetic, physiological and computational approaches to probe the interaction in the local circuit as well as crosstalk between different brain regions. The lab aims to answer how the visual cortex integrates sensory and non-sensory modulatory information to regulate plasticity, and uses mutational, physiological, pharmacological and molecular manipulation, with imaging approaches to identify the underlying biological basis of visual cortical plasticity in the developing and adult rodent brain. In particular, the lab asks how these dynamic processes are regulated by sensory and neuromodulatory pathways across the brain, and how the neurons interact with local environment like interneurons and glial cells.
Publications
•    Lebedeva, A., Kling, F., Rakela, B., Stryker, M. P., & Sun, J. Y. (2025). 'GABAergic signaling by VIP interneurons gates running-dependent visual recovery in the adult brain', bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology, 2025.05.21.655402. 

•    Rakela, B., Sun, J., Marchetta, P., Alvarez-Buylla, A., Hasenstaub, A., & Stryker, M. (2025). 'Integration of Transplanted Interneurons Over a New Period of Ocular Dominance Plasticity in Adult Visual Cortex'. bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology, 2024.12.27.630358. 

•    Whitehead, M., Harvey, J.P., Sladen, P.E. et al. 'Disruption of mitochondrial homeostasis and permeability transition pore opening in OPA1 iPSC-derived retinal ganglion cells', acta neuropathol commun 13, 28 (2025). 

Omar Mahroo
Professor Omar Mahroo is a Professor of Retinal Neuroscience at UCL, and a consultant ophthalmologist and retinal specialist at Moorfields Eye Hospital and St Thomas’ Hospital. His clinical specialisation is inherited retinal disease and he is currently the Director of the Moorfields Macula Course. Professor Mahroo is the Chief Investigator for the CRN Portfolio Non-Commercial Study “Recording Retinal Responses in Health and Disease”. The Mahroo lab focuses on  human retinal function in health and disease, using in vivo electrophysiology (recording the electrical responses produced by retinal neurons in response to light) and complementary approaches including retinal imaging, genetic investigation and machine learning.
Publications
•    Lin, S., Cancellieri, F., Cao, Y., Lotery, A. J., Moye, A. R., Vaclavik, V., Perren, F., Poplawski, A. B., Schiff, E. R., Ullah, M., Iglesias-Romero, A. B., Kaminska, K., Jestin, A., Folcher, M., Wallerich, S., Ribeiro, M. M., Hahaut, V., Picelli, S., Mustafi, D., Tworak, A., … Arno, G. (2026). 'Bi-allelic variants in FSD1L cause retinitis pigmentosa with or without neurological involvement', American journal of human genetics, 113(3), 616–626. 

•    Omar Abdul Rahman Mahroo, NIKOLAS PONTIKOS, Gavin Arno, Rola Ba-Abbad, Samantha Malka, Genevieve Wright, Monica Armengol, Menachem Katz, Anthony Moore, Michel Michaelides, Andrew Webster; 'Genetic basis of inherited retinal disease in a UK cohort of over 2900 families', Invest. Ophthalmol. Vis. Sci. 2019;60(9):401. 

•    Romo-Aguas, J. C., de Guimarāes, T. A. C., Kalitzeos, A., Alfaro-Goldaracena, M. D. P., Baker, R. A., Robson, A. G., Fujinami, K., Fujinami-Yokokawa, Y., Mahroo, O. A., Webster, A. R., & Michaelides, M. (2026). 'Genetic and Phenotypic Characterization of a Large Cohort of Patients with BBS1-Retinopathy', Ophthalmology science, 6(5), 101164. 

John Greenwood
Professor John Greenwood is a Professor of Visual Perception in Experimental Psychology at UCL. His lab examines facets of visual perception including spatial vision and ‘crowding’ in both typical peripheral vision, and clinical disorders such as amblyopia and nystagmus. The lab is also interested in investigating facial recognition, visual hallucinations and visual imagery, as well as the perception of visual dimensions including motion, depth, and position. The lab utilises psychophysics and computational modelling methods, as well as eye tracking and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
Publications
•    'Visual crowding in albinism: Evidence for a cortical sensory deficit with oculomotor influences', Vijay K Tailor-Hamblin, Maria Theodorou, Annegret Dahlmann-Noor, Tessa M Dekker, John A Greenwood bioRxiv 2026.03.16.712204; doi: 

•    Greenwood, J.A., Kyprianou, M. & Dekker, T.M. 'The development of visual acuity and crowding reveals the slow fine-tuning of foveal vision', Sci Rep 16, 3234 (2026). 

•    Shenyan, O., Haye, L., Milne, G. A., Lisi, M., Greenwood, J. A., Skipper, J. I., & Dekker, T. M. (2025). 'Reduced susceptibility to experimentally-induced complex visual hallucinations with age',  Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior, 191, 188–204. 

Pearse Keane
Professor Pearse Keane is a Professor of Artificial Medical Intelligence at the IoO, and a consultant ophthalmologist at Moorfields Eye Hospital. He is also Director of the INSIGHT health data research hub programme based at Moorfields Eye Hospital. Professor Keane’s research focuses on the intersection of ophthalmology and data science, using retinal images alongside clinical data to build AI systems that detect both retinal and systemic diseases. 
Publications
•    Wagner, S. K., Romero-Bascones, D., Cortina-Borja, M., Williamson, D. J., Struyven, R. R., Zhou, Y., Patel, S., Weil, R. S., Antoniades, C. A., Topol, E. J., Korot, E., Foster, P. J., Balaskas, K., Ayala, U., Barrenechea, M., Gabilondo, I., Schapira, A. H. V., Khawaja, A. P., Patel, P. J., Rahi, J. S., … for UK Biobank Eye & Vision Consortium (2023). 'Retinal Optical Coherence Tomography Features Associated With Incident and Prevalent Parkinson Disease', in Neurology, 101(16), e1581–e1593. 

•    van der Heide, F. C., Zamoum, Y., Ounissi, M., Berendschot, T. T., Cheung, C. Y., Koronyo-Hamaoui, M., Schmetterer, L., Chua, J., Peto, T., Lengyel, I., Csincsik, L., Creuzot, C., Arnould, L., Stalmans, I., Trucco, E., Macgillivray, T., Khawaja, A. P., Zhu, L. Z., Keane, P. A., Wong, T. Y., … Milea, D. (2026). 'Quantification of retinal microvascular imaging features from fundus photos in ocular and systemic disease: a framework for standardization. Progress in retinal and eye research', 112, 101461. Advance online publication. 

•    Zhou, Y., Chia, M.A., Wagner, S.K. et al. 'A foundation model for generalizable disease detection from retinal images', in Nature 622, 156–163 (2023).