Your retina and brain come from the same tissue, a teen used that

The retina and the brain develop from the same embryonic tissue, meaning changes in brain development may also be reflected in the eye. That fact became the foundation for RetinaMind, an AI tool built by 17-year-old New Jersey student Edward Kang to screen for autism spectrum disorder and ADHD.

Kang, a senior at Bergen County Academies in Hackensack, began working on RetinaMind in 2023 after reading research on the retina-brain connection. He trained the AI using publicly available retinal image datasets, analysing photographs of the back of the eye for microscopic patterns linked to autism, ADHD and neurotypical individuals. Unlike many AI models that function as ‘black boxes,’ RetinaMind also produces explainable heat maps showing which parts of the retina shaped its prediction.

The project earned Kang second place and a $175,000 prize at the 2026 Regeneron Science Talent Search, one of the United States’ most prestigious competitions for young scientists, and achieved 89% diagnostic accuracy in initial testing on public research datasets.

Experts caution that RetinaMind has not yet undergone the large-scale clinical trials needed for real-world use and is not a replacement for clinical diagnosis. Still, it reflects a growing area of research into the retina as a window into brain health, with similar work underway on Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and schizophrenia.

Image: Wikimedia Commons/by OptometrusPrime