title: Eye movements in visual search indicate impaired saliency processing in Parkinson's disease.
abstract: Previous studies have produced contradictory evidence on the nature of the visual search impairment in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). Eye movements were measured during multi-target search in nine individuals with mild-to-moderate PD. Subjects were asked to click on a response button whenever they judged they were fixating a target for the first time. Compared to age-matched healthy volunteers, PD patients were impaired at efficient search (detecting "+"s amongst "L"s) but not inefficient search ("T"s amongst "L"s). However, these patients had normal memory for locations as indexed by their rate of re-clicking on previously inspected locations. We suggest that the pattern of gaze for efficient search may reflect impaired saliency processing in PD.
authors: Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Imperial College London, UK. s.mannan@imperial.ac.uk
authors: Sabira K
authors: SK
authors: Mannan
authors: Timothy L
authors: TL
authors: Hodgson
authors: Masud
authors: M
authors: Husain
authors: Christopher
authors: C
authors: Kennard
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D005133:Eye Movements / Q000502:physiology*; D005403:Fixation, Ocular / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology; D008875:Middle Aged; D010300:Parkinson Disease / Q000503:physiopathology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*