Do eye movement impairments in patients with small vessel cerebrovascular disease depend on lesion load or on cognitive deficits? A video-oculographic and MRI study

Abstract

Small vessel cerebrovascular disease (SVCD) is one of the most frequent vessel disorders in the aged brain. Among the spectrum of neurological disturbances related to SVCD, oculomotor dysfunction is a not well understood symptom- in particular, it remains unclear whether vascular lesion load in specific brain regions affects oculomotor function independent of cognitive decline in SVCD patients or whether the effect of higher brain function deficits prevails. In this study, we examined a cohort of 25 SVCD patients and 19 healthy controls using video-oculographic eye movement recording in a laboratory environment, computer-based MRI assessment of white matter lesion load (WMLL), assessment of extrapyramidal motor deficits, and psychometric testing. In comparison to controls, the mean WMLL of patients was significantly larger than in controls. With respect to eye movement control, patients performed significantly worse than controls in almost all aspects of oculomotion. Likewise, patients showed a significantly worse performance in all but one of the neuropsychological tests. Oculomotor deficits in SVCD correlated with the patients' cognitive dysfunctioning while there was only weak evidence for a direct effect of WMLL on eye movement control. In conclusion, oculomotor impairment in SVCD seems to be mainly contingent upon cognitive deterioration in SVCD while WMLL might have only a minor specific effect upon oculomotor pathways.

The association between alterations of eye movement control and cerebral intrinsic functional connectivity in Parkinson’s disease

“…(Folstein et al 1975) d Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer's Disease (CERAD) (Fillenbaum et al 2008), the total score was calculated according to (Chandler et al 2005). The score was corrected for age and education and falls wit cognitive decline e Levodopa equivalent daily dose (LEDD) computed according to (Tomlinson et al 2010) The oculomotor recordings were postprocessed by the use of an interactive MATLAB® (The Mathworks Inc., Natick, MA, USA)-based in-house software package OculoMotor Analysis (Gorges et al 2013;Pinkhardt et al 2008Pinkhardt et al , 2009Pinkhardt et al , 2012Pinkhardt et al , 2014. Preprocessing of the VOG raw data included noise reduction by filtering, cross-talk suppression, calibration, and deletion of artefacts (corrupted signals, blinks).…”

Eye-tracking controlled cognitive function tests in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: a controlled proof-of-principle study

“…Eye movements were recorded using the portable video-oculography EyeSeeCam Ò device (EyeSeeTec GmbH, Fürstenfeldbruck, Germany) that measures binocular eye positions synchronously with 0.02°s patial resolution at a temporal sampling rate of 220 Hz [28]. An interactive MATLAB Ò (The Mathworks Inc., Natick, MA, USA)-based in-house software package OculoMotor Analysis [26,27,29] was used for analysis of eye movement recordings. The calibration procedures require the subject to track a 'slow' sinusoidal single-spot target oscillation (horizontal range ±20°; vertical range ±15°, f = 0.125 Hz) to map the non-calibrated orthogonalized 'raw' data from the EyeSeeCam Ò device with respect to the 'true' orthogonalized eye position.…”

“…Oculomotor testing took place in an acoustically shielded, darkened room with participants comfortably seated in the center of a hemi-cylindrical screen (for details see [26,27]). The distance between subjects' eyes and screen was approximately 150 cm.…”

Alterations of Eye Movement Control in Neurodegenerative Movement Disorders

“…PD patients presented with a lack of attentional control resulting in the disability to withhold unwanted gaze shifts which appears to manifest even in nondemented PD patients [9]. This can be tested by utilizing tasks such as delayed saccades [9, 37, 46] or antisaccades [47]. …”