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Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) are studying why certain psychiatric diagnoses have abnormalities in eye movement. For example, patients with schizophrenia have been shown to have difficulty keeping their eyes focused on slow-moving objects. New technologies are being developed and studied to measure these abnormalities precisely and compare them with normal visual patterns.
Irregularities in how the eyes track a moving object reflect defects in the neural circuitry of the brain and appear to correspond with particular types of mental disorders. The National Institute of Mental Health has given a $1.2 million grant to the Center for Cognitive Medicine in UIC's department of psychiatry with the goal of testing eye movement patterns in patients diagnosed with a number of psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression, in order to begin to validate eye movement abnormalities as markers for different disorders.
Participants in the study wear infrared glasses, called scleral-reflection glasses, which are linked to a computer that records minute movements of the eyes very precisely. They then complete similar tasks in an MRI scanner, enabling the researchers to observe the corresponding brain activity directly. With the scanner, the brain regions controlling different types of eye movements are systematically investigated one at a time.
There is a great deal of interest in studies like this not only because of the hope of discovering clearly definable patterns that can assist in a diagnosis but also because these are non invasive procedures. Early identification of high risk individuals can make a significant difference in their quality of life.
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