Title:Oculomotor Abnormalities during Reading in the Offspring of Late-Onset
Alzheimer’s Disease
Volume: 19
Issue: 3
Author(s): Gerardo Fernández*, Ana Paula González, Carolina Abulafia, Leticia Fiorentini, Osvaldo Agamennoni and Salvador M. Guinjoan
Affiliation:
- ViewMind Inc, New York, USA
- (IIIE-CONICET) (UNS-CONICET) (CIC), Bahía Blanca, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Keywords:
Offspring of late-onset, Alzheimer’s disease, reading performance, oculomotor behavior, cognitive impairments, O-LOAD
Abstract:
Introduction: Eye movement patterns during reading are well defined and documented.
Each eye movement ends up in a fixation point, which allows the brain to process the incoming information
and program the following saccade. In this work, we investigated whether eye movement
alterations during a reading task might be already present in middle-aged, cognitively normal offspring
of late-onset Alzheimer’s disease (O-LOAD).
Methods: 18 O-LOAD and 18 age-matched healthy individuals with no family history of LOAD participated
in the study. Participants were seated in front of a 20-inch LCD monitor, and single sentences
were presented on it. Eye movements were recorded with an eye tracker with a sampling rate
of 1000 Hz.
Results: Analysis of eye movements during reading revealed that O-LOAD displayed more fixations,
shorter saccades, and shorter fixation durations than controls.
Conclusion: The present study shows that O-LOAD experienced alterations in their eye movements
during reading. O-LOAD eye movement behavior could be considered an initial sign of oculomotor
impairment. Hence, the evaluation of eye movement during reading might be a useful tool for monitoring
well-defined cognitive resources.
