Saccadic and smooth pursuit eye movements in memory-impaired elderly people.
The aim of the study was to compare eye movements recorded in 14 non-demented memory impaired elderly subjects with those of 36 sex- and education-matched controls. Eye movements were recorded with the bitemporal electrooculographic technique, and analyzed with a personal computer. Saccades were elicited in accordance with reflexive, predictive and antisaccade paradigms. Smooth pursuit eye movements were elicited with a triangular ramp paradigm. The memory-impaired subjects showed a higher prevalence of increased reflexive saccade latency and a lower smooth pursuit performance index. In addition, we detected a correlation between antisaccade and reflexive saccade latencies. Our results showed very slight differences in eye movement parameters. However, our findings are in keeping with the hypothesis of a subtle involvement of differing cortical areas in memory impaired subjects.
Versino
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Istituto Neurologico Fondazione C. Mondino, Università di Pavia, Italy.
Romani
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Beltrami
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Cosi
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D000368:Aged; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D003704:Dementia / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology; D004585:Electrooculography / Q000295:instrumentation; D006801:Humans; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D008838:Microcomputers; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011698:Pursuit, Smooth / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012016:Reference Values; D012018:Reflex / Q000502:physiology; D012438:Saccades / Q000502:physiology*; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000295:instrumentation