Eye movements in visual search indicate impaired saliency processing in Parkinson's disease

Prog Brain Res. 2008:171:559-62. doi: 10.1016/S0079-6123(08)00679-1.

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.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Aged
  • Eye Movements / physiology*
  • Fixation, Ocular / physiology*
  • Humans
  • Memory / physiology
  • Middle Aged
  • Parkinson Disease / physiopathology*
  • Visual Perception / physiology*