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Eva Kostial

Visual topography of Old World monkeys and Man

In most mammals photoreceptors and interneurons are not evenly distributed
across the retina. Topographic mappings of human and macaque retinas have shown that S-cone distribution is generally concentric and this organization is in accordance with functional parameters such as perimetry or local ERG studies.

In her masters study Eva Kostial has studied the cone photoreceptor distribution in other Old World monkeys.
The terrain theory (Hughes,1977 ) suggests a connection between open habitats and topographic horizontal elongation. Indeed, normalized polar plots reveal subtle yet significant differences in the weighting of quadrants and tendencies towards streak like extensions but the human case appears to deviate, possibly due to specific requirements adopted during hominization.

Paper in submitted
Human cone mosaic. Short wavelength opsin cones are revealed by anti-opsin immunohistochemical labeling.
Human retinal wholemounts, Both, subpopulations of cones show a generally concentric organization,
centered at the fovea, S-cones.

Modified from:
Ahnelt et al. 2006,
Vis. Neuroscience