Imagine driving a car where the steering wheel is a little wobbly and doesn’t respond as quickly as it should. It can be disorienting and even dangerous. Well, researchers have discovered that people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), a condition that can precede dementia, may experience similar obstacles when it comes to controlling their eye movements. In a recent study, scientists used comprehensive neuropsychological assessments and eye movement tasks to examine how MCI affects saccadic eye movements—the quick, coordinated movements made by our eyes when we shift our gaze. The findings revealed that individuals with MCI had longer eye movement latency and were more prone to errors in inhibition tasks. Notably, they struggled to self-correct their mistakes, pointing to impaired inhibitory control. This research indicates that assessing eye movement performance could serve as a valuable screening tool for MCI before it progresses to dementia. To dive deeper into this fascinating topic, make sure to check out the full article!

BackgroundMild cognitive impairment (MCI) may occur due to several forms of neurodegenerative diseases and non-degenerative conditions and is associated with cognitive impairment that does not affect everyday activities. For a timely diagnosis of MCI to prevent progression to dementia, a screening tool of fast, low-cost and easy access is needed. Recent research on eye movement hints it a potential application for the MCI screening. However, the precise extent of cognitive function decline and eye-movement control alterations in patients with MCI is still unclear.ObjectiveThis study examined executive control deficits and saccade behavioral changes in patients with MCI using comprehensive neuropsychological assessment and interleaved saccade paradigms.MethodsPatients with MCI (n = 79) and age-matched cognitively healthy controls (HC) (n = 170) completed four saccadic eye-movement paradigms: prosaccade (PS)/antisaccade (AS), Go/No-go, and a battery of neuropsychological tests.ResultsThe findings revealed significantly longer latency in patients with MCI than in HC during the PS task. Additionally, patients with MCI had a lower proportion of correct responses and a marked increase in inhibition errors for both PS/AS and Go/No-go tasks. Furthermore, when patients with MCI made errors, they failed to self-correct many of these inhibition errors. In addition to the increase in inhibition errors and uncorrected inhibition errors, patients with MCI demonstrated a trend toward increased correction latencies. We also showed a relationship between neuropsychological scores and correct and error saccade responses.ConclusionOur results demonstrate that, similar to patients with Alzheimer’s dementia (AD), patients with MCI generate a high proportion of erroneous saccades toward the prepotent target and fail to self-correct many of these errors, which is consistent with an impairment of inhibitory control and error monitoring.SignificanceThe interleaved PS/AS and Go/No-go paradigms are sensitive and objective at detecting subtle cognitive deficits and saccade changes in MCI, indicating that these saccadic eye movement paradigms have clinical potential as a screening tool for MCI.

Read Full Article (External Site)