Search PubMed⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search PubMed

Results for “Eye Movements”

Search indexed PubMed citations on genomics, clinical trials, systematic reviews and public health. Explore titles, authors and supplied subject terms, then open the PubMed record.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 667 records · Page 37Linked to original sources

Smooth pursuit and saccadic eye movements and Wisconsin Card Sorting Test performance in obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Smooth pursuit eye movements (SPEMs), voluntary saccadic eye movements (VSEMs), and neuropsychological test (Touluse-Pieron Test and Wisconsin Card Sorting Test) performance were studied in 23 patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder and 27 age-matched normal control subjects. The patients performed more poorly than the control subjects on the SPEM and, to a lesser degree, VSEM measures. They also showed impairment on some aspects of the neuropsychological tests. No relationship was found between eye movement performance and neuropsychological impairment.

Adult↗

Poor performance in smooth pursuit and antisaccadic eye-movement tasks in healthy siblings of patients with schizophrenia.

This study examines the area of eye movement dysfunctions as an indicator of vulnerability to schizophrenia. Eye movement performance was investigated with three different paradigms: Smooth Pursuit Eye Movements (SPEM); Visually Guided Saccades (VGS); and Antisaccades (AS) in 21 clinically stable patients with schizophrenia, 21 of their healthy, biological full siblings and 21 healthy control subjects. The three groups did not differ on VGS performance, whereas both patients and their siblings showed lower SPEM gain, an increased catch-up Saccades (CUS) rate, reduced AS accuracy and an increased number of AS errors in comparison to control subjects. In addition, patients with schizophrenia exhibited increased AS latency. Among the patients with schizophrenia, eye movement abnormalities did not correlate with age, gender, clinical state or duration of illness. These data suggest that abnormalities of SPEM and AS may represent neurobiological markers of the vulnerability to schizophrenia in individuals at high genetic risk for the disease.

Adult↗

Smooth-pursuit eye-movement-related neuronal activity in macaque nucleus reticularis tegmenti pontis.

Neuronal responses that were observed during smooth-pursuit eye movements were recorded from cells in rostral portions of the nucleus reticularis tegmenti pontis (rNRTP). The responses were categorized as smooth-pursuit eye velocity (78%) or eye acceleration (22%). A separate population of rNRTP cells encoded static eye position. The sensitivity to pursuit eye velocity averaged 0.81 spikes/s per degrees /s, whereas the average sensitivity to pursuit eye acceleration was 0.20 spikes/s per degrees /s(2). Of the eye-velocity cells with horizontal preferences for pursuit responses, 56% were optimally responsive to contraversive smooth-pursuit eye movements and 44% preferred ipsiversive pursuit. For cells with vertical pursuit preferences, 61% preferred upward pursuit and 39% preferred downward pursuit. The direction selectivity was broad with 50% of the maximal response amplitude observed for directions of smooth pursuit up to +/-85 degrees away from the optimal direction. The activities of some rNRTP cells were linearly related to eye position with an average sensitivity of 2.1 spikes/s per deg. In some cells, the magnitude of the response during smooth-pursuit eye movements was affected by the position of the eyes even though these cells did not encode eye position. On average, pursuit centered to one side of screen center elicited a response that was 73% of the response amplitude obtained with tracking centered at screen center. For pursuit centered on the opposite side, the average response was 127% of the response obtained at screen center. The results provide a neuronal rationale for the slow, pursuit-like eye movements evoked with rNRTP microstimulation and for the deficits in smooth-pursuit eye movements observed with ibotenic acid injection into rNRTP. More globally, the results support the notion of a frontal and supplementary eye field-rNRTP-cerebellum pathway involved with controlling smooth-pursuit eye movements.

Acceleration↗

Reading words and pseudowords: an eye movement study of developmental dyslexia.

The pattern of eye movements during reading was studied in 12 developmental dyslexics and in 10 age-matched controls. According to standard reading batteries, dyslexics showed marked reading slowness and prevalently used the sublexical procedure in reading. Eye movements were recorded while they read lists of short and long words or pseudowords. In normal readers, saccade amplitude increased with word length without a concomitant change in the number of saccades; in contrast, the number of saccades increased for long pseudowords. In dyslexics, the eye movement pattern was different. The number of saccades depended on stimulus length for both words and pseudowords while saccade amplitude remained small and constant. The sequential scanning shown by dyslexics for both words and pseudowords appears consistent with the cognitive description of the reading disorder which indicates the preferential use of the sublexical print-to-sound correspondence rules.

Adolescent↗

Identification of abnormal patterns in eye movements of schizophrenic patients.

Using precise infrared recording instrumentation, we measured the eye-movement patterns in six schizophrenic patients who were taking medication and found saccadic intrusions and saccadic smooth-pursuit tracking in three. This defined some of the eye-movement irregularities reported previously by many investigators. A variety of eye-movement functions in addition to smooth pursuit exhibited these abnormalities, including fixation, vergence, and head-eye pursuit. Saccadic intrusions or saccadic pursuit also occurs in a number of neuro-ophthalmologic disorders, and occasionally in healthy normal subjects. Thus, these eye-movement abnormalities do not occur exclusively in schizophrenia.

Adult↗

Enhancement of multiple components of pursuit eye movement by microstimulation in the arcuate frontal pursuit area in monkeys.

Periarcuate frontal cortex is involved in the control of smooth pursuit eye movements, but its role remains unclear. To better understand the control of pursuit by the "frontal pursuit area" (FPA), we applied electrical microstimulation when the monkeys were performing a variety of oculomotor tasks. In agreement with previous studies, electrical stimulation consisting of a train of 50-microA pulses at 333 Hz during fixation of a stationary target elicited smooth eye movements with a short latency (approximately 26 ms). The size of the elicited smooth eye movements was enhanced when the stimulation pulses were delivered during the maintenance of pursuit. The enhancement increased as a function of ongoing pursuit speed and was greater during pursuit in the same versus opposite direction of the eye movements evoked at a site. If stimulation was delivered during pursuit in eight different directions, the elicited eye velocity was fit best by a model incorporating two stimulation effects: a directional signal that drives eye velocity and an increase in the gain of ongoing pursuit eye speed in all directions. Separate experiments tested the effect of stimulation on the response to specific image motions. Stimulation consisted of a train of pulses at 100 or 200 Hz delivered during fixation so that only small smooth eye movements were elicited. If the stationary target was perturbed briefly during microstimulation, normally weak eye movement responses showed strong enhancement. If delivered at the initiation of pursuit, the same microstimulation caused enhancement of the presaccadic initiation of pursuit for steps of target velocity that moved the target either away from the position of fixation or in the direction of the eye movement caused by stimulation at the site. Stimulation in the FPA increased the latency of saccades to stationary or moving targets. Our results show that the FPA has two kinds of effects on the pursuit system. One drives smooth eye velocity in a fixed direction and is subject to on-line gain control by ongoing pursuit. The other causes enhancement of both the speed of ongoing pursuit and the responses to visual motion in a way that is not strongly selective for the direction of pursuit. Enhancement may operate either at a single site or at multiple sites. We conclude that the FPA plays an important role in on-line gain control for pursuit as well as possibly delivering commands for the direction and speed of smooth eye motion.

Animals↗

Precise measurement of individual rapid eye movements in REM sleep of humans.

An automated analyzer for individual eye movements (EMs) has been developed that enables precise analyses of their incidence. Three new parameters for each EM are obtained: EM magnitude, the angle and speed of eyeball rotation, and the energy of each EM. All rapid eye movement (REM) sleep EMs from 40 nights of polysomnography for 20 healthy young men were analyzed. The mean frequency of eye movement (EM frequency) was 15.9 per minute. Compared to conventionally analyzed rapid eye movement (REM) density, EM frequency was more sensitive to differences among sleep cycles, nights, and individuals. The mean EM rotation was 6.27 +/- 0.021 degrees, the mean speed of rotation was 58.73 +/- 0.18 degrees/second, and mean energy was 525.85 +/- 3.82 degrees2/second. The distribution of changes in these new parameters differed from conventional measures across REM episodes. The conventional measures, REM episode duration, and REM density increased progressively in successive REM episodes in an ascent-to-right pattern. However, the new parameters peaked in the second, followed by relatively low values, producing an inverted V pattern. This discrepancy could indicate physiological mechanisms of EM that are not revealed in conventional measures of REM sleep intensity.

Adult↗

[The correlation between changes in EEG and eye movement (EOG) accompanied by lowered arousal level].

We investigated the correlation between the components of spontaneous eye movement (EOG) and EEG in six healthy individuals. The study was conducted in three periods; from the resting to drowsy stage, from the drowsy to spontaneous awakening stage, and in the forced waking stage. EEG, as registered from bipolar electrodes attached between the left parietal region (P3) and the left occipital region (O1), was monitored continuously by the FFT method with a segment of 12.8 seconds. Rapid eye movement and slow eye movement were observed simultaneously. In conclusion, even when the arousal level varies considerably, there is a close correlation between frequency of rapid eye movement and EEG patterns of 10.16 integral of 10.94 Hz & 17.97 integral of 19.53 Hz (simple correlation p < 0.01). Additionally, during the forced waking period (after stage 2), delta and theta bands increased in cases along with sleepiness. Even if the depth of sleep was the same, one's mood upon awakening was determined by the frequency of slow waves before awakening.

Adult↗

Smooth pursuit eye movements in normal and dyslexic children.

This paper describes a detailed study of horizontal eye movements associated with visual tracking of a smoothly moving target. Essentially all children, even at target velocities as low as 5 degrees/sec., show some saccadic eye movements superimposed on smooth tracking movements. Detailed analysis of pursuit eye-movements from a group of 26 poor readers and 34 normal controls (8 to 13 yr.) showed that about 25% of poor readers have an abnormally raised saccadic component in smooth pursuit. This suggests that studies of eye movements during tracking of smoothly moving targets at low velocity, combined with a quantitative approach to data analysis, may be useful for early detection of a significant proportion of poor-reading children.

Child↗

Pontine carbachol elicits multiple rapid eye movement sleep-like neural events in urethane-anaesthetized rats.

Microinjection of a cholinergic agonist, carbachol, into the pontine reticular formation of chronically instrumented intact or acutely decerebrate rats and cats has been used extensively to study rapid eye movement sleep mechanisms. In this study, we sought to develop a reduced carbachol model of rapid eye movement sleep-like neural events exhibiting multiple physiological markers of this state, and allowing for the use of invasive electrophysiological techniques. Accordingly, we investigated whether pontine carbachol could produce rapid eye movement sleep-like motor atonia and electrocortical changes in urethane-anaesthetized rats. We recorded cortical and hippocampal electroencephalograms and genioglossus and inspiratory intercostal muscle activities in 13 urethane-anaesthetized, spontaneously breathing, tracheotomized and vagotomized rats. In steady-state periods with high-voltage/low-frequency electroencephalogram activity, carbachol microinjections (15-40 nl, 10 mM) were placed in the medial pontine reticular formation. In 12 rats, carbachol elicited episodes of stereotyped hypotonia of genioglossus but not intercostal muscle activity, typical of rapid eye movement sleep, with a latency and duration of 2.2+/-0.3min (mean+/-S.E.M.) and 11.0+/-2.9 min, respectively. In four of these rats, also similar to rapid eye movement sleep, the major suppression of genioglossus activity (-74+/-9%) was accompanied by electroencephalogram desynchronization, appearance of hippocampal theta rhythm, and a respiratory rate increase (+ 14+/-3%). In the remaining eight rats, the stereotyped suppression of genioglossus activity (-48+/-3%) occurred without electroencephalogram desynchronization and hippocampal theta, and was accompanied by a respiratory rate decrease (-6+/-2%); a pattern of response typical of decerebrate animals. Within a rat, similar patterns of response to repeated carbachol injections at the same anatomical site were obtained. Pontine atropine prevented responses to subsequent carbachol injections. Thus, in urethane-anaesthetized rats, pontine carbachol consistently produced a differential suppression of pharyngeal versus respiratory pump muscle activity, and in a subset of animals, this was also accompanied by cortical and hippocampal electrographic changes typical of rapid eye movement sleep. This shows that complex and stereotyped neuronal events underlying both ascending and descending signs of rapid eye movement sleep can be pharmacologically activated under general anaesthesia. Such a reduced preparation may be useful for studies into the central neuronal mechanisms underlying generation of rapid eye movement sleep; particularly for studies requiring techniques that are difficult to implement in intact, naturally sleeping animals. The acceleration of the respiratory rate observed only when carbachol induced electroencephalogram desynchronization suggests that neural events associated with electrocortical changes contribute to the respiratory rate increases observed in natural rapid eye movement sleep.

Anesthesia↗

Coding of information about rapid eye movements in the pontine reticular formation of alert monkeys.

Neurons in the rostral paramedian zone of the pontine reticular formation (PRF) have distinct frequency changes prior to and during quick eye movements, but generally little or no tonic activity associated with eye position. Evidence indicates that horizontal saccades and quick phases of nystagmus are generated in this region. Firing of units activated with eye movements (burst units) and of units which are inhibited (pause units) was analyzed. Eye movements were described by a vector having an amplitude (A) and an angle (a). These parameters were related to position changes in certain planes by the equation delta pos = A - cos alpha. In each of 80 cells in the PRF which were encountered, the activity could be related to some parameter of the above equation: change of position (delta pos), amplitude (A), or the cosine of the angle between the direction of movement and a reference direction (cos alpha). Units coding amplitude of eye movement or change in position in a particular plane conveyed the information by number of spikes. Units coding direction of movement did so by frequency. In many units, the information coding was precise so that the direction or amplitude of single eye movements could be predicted from the frequency changes of single units. In other units, this could be determined from averages of the frequency changes. Cells coding direction or change in position had frequency maxima only in planes corresponding to the pulling direction of the eye muscles. The results suggest that a vector description is not only a convenient mathematical tool, but is the way eye movements are coded in the PRF and possibly elsewhere in the central nervous system.

Animals↗

Pursuit eye movement dysfunction in HIV-1 seropositive individuals.

Studies of smooth pursuit eye movements were conducted in 30 ambulatory drug-free HIV-1 seropositive patients who did not yet manifest marked clinical signs of the AIDS Dementia Complex. Seropositive patients demonstrated disturbances in pursuit eye movements that were correlated with extent of immunosuppression, with impairments on neuropsychological tests of fine motor control/speed, and with independent clinical staging of the AIDS Dementia Complex. The results provide quantitative evidence that oculomotor disturbances are present in HIV-1 seropositive individuals before the manifestation of marked AIDS Dementia Complex. For this reason, and because more severe eye movement impairments have been observed in patients with AIDS, quantitative eye movement studies may provide a useful neurobehavioral procedure for characterizing and monitoring progression of CNS involvement associated with HIV-1 infection from early in its course.

Adult↗

Functional anatomy of pursuit eye movements in humans as revealed by fMRI.

We have investigated the functional anatomy of pursuit eye movements in humans with functional magnetic imaging. The performance of pursuit eye movements induced activations in the cortical eye fields also activated during the execution of visually guided saccadic eye movements, namely in the precentral cortex [frontal eye field (FEF)], the medial superior frontal cortex (supplementary eye field), the intraparietal cortex (parietal eye field), and the precuneus, and at the junction of occipital and temporal cortex (MT/MST) cortex. Pursuit-related areas could be distinguished from saccade-related areas both in terms of spatial extent and location. Pursuit-related areas were smaller than their saccade-related counterparts, three of eight significantly so. The pursuit-related FEF was usually inferior to saccade-related FEF. Other pursuit-related areas were consistently posterior to their saccade-related counterparts. The current findings provide the first functional imaging evidence for a distinction between two parallel cortical systems that subserve pursuit and saccadic eye movements in humans.

Adult↗

Dodge-ing the issue: Dodge, Javal, Hering, and the measurement of saccades in eye-movement research.

Dodge, in 1916, suggested that the French term 'saccade' should be used for describing the rapid movements of the eyes that occur while reading. Previously he had referred to these as type I movements. Javal had used the term 'saccade' in 1879, when describing experiments conducted in his laboratory by Lamare. Accordingly, Javal has been rightly credited with assigning the term to rapid eye movements. In English these rapid rotations had been called jerks, and they had been observed and measured before Lamare's studies of reading. Rapid sweeps of the eyes occur as one phase of nystagmus; they were observed by Wells in 1792 who used an afterimage technique, and they were illustrated by Crum Brown in 1878. Afterimages were used in nineteenth-century research on eye movements and eye position; they were also employed by Hering in 1879, to ascertain how the eyes moved during reading. In the previous year, Javal had employed afterimages in his investigations of reading, but this was to demonstrate that the eyes moved horizontally rather than vertically. Hering's and Lamare's auditory method established the discontinuous nature of eye movements during reading, and the photographic methods introduced by Dodge and others in the early twentieth century enabled their characteristics to be determined with greater accuracy.

Biomedical Research↗

Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR): a meta-analysis.

Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), a controversial treatment suggested for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other conditions, was evaluated in a meta-analysis of 34 studies that examined EMDR with a variety of populations and measures. Process and outcome measures were examined separately. and EMDR showed an effect on both when compared with no treatment and with therapies not using exposure to anxiety-provoking stimuli and in pre post EMDR comparisons. However, no significant effect was found when EMDR was compared with other exposure techniques. No incremental effect of eye movements was noted when EMDR was compared with the same procedure without them. R. J. DeRubeis and P. Crits-Christoph (1998) noted that EMDR is a potentially effective treatment for noncombat PTSD. but studies that examined such patient groups did not give clear support to this. In sum, EMDR appears to be no more effective than other exposure techniques, and evidence suggests that the eye movements integral to the treatment, and to its name, are unnecessary.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

Motion aftereffect elicits smooth pursuit eye movements.

A moving stimulus is normally required to elicit smooth pursuit eye movements that serve to keep the retinal image of moving objects on the fovea. Recent experiments have shown that in cases where motion cues are ambiguous, pursuit eye movements tend to agree in direction and speed with the percept of motion. Here, we exploit the motion aftereffect (MAE) to show for the first time that smooth pursuit eye movements can also be elicited by the illusory motion of a stationary stimulus. After prolonged exposure to a moving stimulus, subjects show reliable pursuit of a physically stationary stimulus that is perceived to be moving. Conversely, the eyes remain stationary when viewing a physically moving stimulus that is perceived to be stationary. The MAE biases smooth eye movements in a way that agrees with the constant offset that is required to null the MAE perceptually. The agreement between perception and pursuit holds over a variety of stimulus conditions that modulate the magnitude of the MAE.

Adult↗

Visual field defects for vergence eye movements and for stereomotion perception.

An objective visual field can be mapped in terms of stimulus-induced eye movement. The authors used the scleral coil technique to record vergence and conjugate eye movements while stimulating different visual field locations with a 3 X 3 deg target whose image vergence was oscillated. For each of three subjects tested there was a visual field location where vergence eye movements were much weaker than in a control location of equal retinal eccentricity. On the other hand, conjugate eye movements driven from these two locations by lateral motion were similar. Field defects for ocular vergence coincided with regions in which oscillating retinal disparity failed to produce a sensation of motion in depth, although visual responses to static disparity were normal, and psychophysical thresholds for lateral motion showed no defect with either binocular or monocular viewing. It was concluded, therefore, that the perceptual stereomotion scotomata were not due to a monocular loss, but to a defective binocular interaction between motion signals from the left and right eyes, and that this defective interaction was specific for opposed rather than parallel motion in the two eyes. Furthermore, the visual loss was specific for motion rather than for position. The correlation between the field defects for ocular vergence and stereomotion perception leads the authors to suggest that the same defect in binocular interaction is responsible for both the eye movement and sensory abnormalities. Two candidate hypotheses are proposed: one is framed in terms of a single population, and the other in terms of two populations of cortical neurons.

Blindness↗

Experience-dependent eye movements, awareness, and hippocampus-dependent memory.

We asked what kind of memory is operating when eye movements change as the result of experience. Participants viewed scenes that were either novel, repeated, or manipulated (i.e., a change was introduced in one region of the scene). Eye movements differed depending on the past viewing history of each scene. Participants made fewer fixations and sampled fewer regions when scenes were repeated than when scenes were novel. When scenes were altered, participants made more fixations in the altered region, spent more time looking at the altered region, and made more transitions into and out of the altered region than in unchanged (matched) regions in the repeated scenes. Importantly, these effects occurred only when individuals were aware that a change had occurred. Participants who were unaware that the scene had been altered looked at the changed scenes in the same way that they looked at repeated scenes. Thus, there was no indication that eye movements could reveal an unaware (unconscious) form of memory. Instead, eye movements reflected conscious memory of whether the scene was repeated or manipulated. The findings were the same when awareness was assessed after viewing all the scenes (experiment 1) and when awareness was assessed after each scene was presented (experiment 2). In experiment 3, memory-impaired patients with damage limited to the hippocampus were impaired at deciding whether scenes were novel, repeated, or manipulated. Thus, the ability to consciously recollect recent encounters with scenes reflects a form of hippocampus-dependent memory. The findings show that experience-dependent eye movements in response to altered scenes reflect conscious, declarative memory, and they support the link between aware memory, declarative memory, and hippocampus-dependent memory.

Adult↗