We are excited to announce that Takeshi Yoshimatsu, PhD has received his first R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)! This prestigious five-year grant, which began on July 1, 2025, will support groundbreaking research titled: “Visual Feature Competition Between Central and Peripheral Retinal Pathways.”
Takeshi Yoshimatsu, PhD
Assistant Professor, Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences
- Email: takeshi@nospam.wustl.edu
Why This Research Matters
“Eye fixation is a critical visual function conserved across vertebrates. By taking advantage of transparent zebrafish, we can visualize neural activities in the entire eye and brain while performing eye fixation and search for the pathways responsible for this essential visual function,”
Takeshi Yoshimatsu, PhD
Our ability to see clearly and maintain stable vision depends on a delicate balance between the central and peripheral regions of the retina. Eye fixation allows us to focus on details in a specialized high-acuity area of the retina (known as the fovea in humans). At the same time, the peripheral retina is constantly processing incoming information—some of which could trigger disruptive reflexive eye movements, such as the optokinetic reflex. Normally, these reflexes are suppressed to protect our ability to maintain steady fixation.
When this system breaks down, however, vision becomes unstable. This can occur in both early-stage degenerative eye diseases (such as partial macular degeneration) and in higher-order neurological disorders. Understanding how the retina and brain work together to preserve stable fixation is essential for advancing treatments for these conditions.
The Research Approach
With support from the NIH, Yoshimatsu’s team will work to identify the neural populations that enable stable eye fixation. Because this function is highly conserved across vertebrates, the team will use zebrafish as a model system. Zebrafish offer a unique advantage for vision research: their transparency allows scientists to directly observe neural activity in both the eye and the brain. This makes it possible to map out the pathways responsible for visual stability in real time.
By combining advanced imaging techniques with behavioral studies, this research will shed new light on how the visual system balances attention between central and peripheral vision—and how disruptions to this system contribute to vision loss and instability.
Looking Ahead
This R01 grant marks an exciting milestone in Yoshimatsu’s career and for the future of vision research at our institution. The findings from this project may pave the way for new therapies that help preserve stable eye fixation, offering hope to patients living with retinal degeneration and neurological disorders that affect eye movement.
Read more about Yoshimatsu Lab here.
About WashU Medicine
WashU Medicine is a global leader in academic medicine, including biomedical research, patient care and educational programs with 2,900 faculty. Its National Institutes of Health (NIH) research funding portfolio is the second largest among U.S. medical schools and has grown 56% in the last seven years. Together with institutional investment, WashU Medicine commits well over $1 billion annually to basic and clinical research innovation and training. Its faculty practice is consistently within the top five in the country, with more than 1,900 faculty physicians practicing at 130 locations and who are also the medical staffs of Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children’s hospitals of BJC HealthCare. WashU Medicine has a storied history in MD/PhD training, recently dedicated $100 million to scholarships and curriculum renewal for its medical students, and is home to top-notch training programs in every medical subspecialty as well as physical therapy, occupational therapy, and audiology and communications sciences.