Elsevier

Biological Psychiatry

Volume 37, Issue 4, 15 February 1995, Pages 265-272
Biological Psychiatry

Original article
Relationship between smooth pursuit eye-tracking and cognitive performance in schizophrenia

https://doi.org/10.1016/0006-3223(94)00170-8Get rights and content

The relationship between measures of smooth pursuit and neuropsychological performance was assessed in 20 unmedicated schizophrenics. Eye-tracking measures included gain, catch-up saccade parameters, and rate of saccadic intrusions. Neuropsychological measures included tests generally considered as “frontal”; Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), Consonant Trigram Test (CTT), and Controlled Oral Word Association Test (COWAT). The Digit Symbol Test (DST), which is generally considered to be a measure of global functioning, was also included. Gain and other pursuit measures were significantly correlated with the DST and the COWAT, but were not correlated with the WCST or the CTT.

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      In a recent review of eye movement studies in OCD, the authors concluded that pursuit deficits in this clinical population “are much less robust and systematic” than in schizophrenia, and speculated that this difference may be due to the greater involvement of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in schizophrenia vs. orbitofrontal prefrontal cortex in OCD (Jaafari et al., 2011). The superiority of the qualitative rating of eye tracking in distinguishing OCD-co-morbid schizophrenia patients from non-OCD patients is consistent with other reports that this measure discriminates patients and relatives from controls better than specific quantitative measures (e.g., Friedman et al., 1995; Keefe et al., 1997; Levy et al., 2000). A recent meta-analysis of eye tracking dysfunction in schizophrenia quantified the results of studies that used specific quantitative measures of pursuit performance and global measures (O'Driscoll and Callahan, 2008).

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      The eye movement tasks that are thought to be of most relevance in schizophrenia are the smooth pursuit and antisaccade tasks. Some studies have found correlations between smooth pursuit and neuropsychological measures (executive function, working memory) (Bartfai et al.,1985; Katsanis and Iacono,1991; Litman et al., 1991; Park and Holzman, 1993; Grawe and Levander, 1995; Snitz et al., 1999; Iloreta et al., 2005) although others have not (Tien et al., 1996; Hutton et al., 2004) and another (Friedman et al., 1995) gave inconclusive results. Similarly, most studies that have investigated the relationship between antisaccade errors and neuropsychological measures in schizophrenic patients have observed significant correlations (Rosse et al., 1993; Crawford et al., 1995; Tien et al., 1996; Radant et al., 1997; Karoumi et al., 1998; Nieman et al., 2000; Gooding and Tallent, 2001; Levy et al., 2004; Hutton et al., 2004), although again, there have been exceptions (Snitz et al., 1999).

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      In fact there is a growing literature in this area. Some of the studies reviewed here included comparisons to other psychiatric disorders, including affective disorders (Flechtner, Steinacher, Sauer, & Mackert, 1997; Flechtner, Steinacher, Sauer, & Mackert, 2002; Friedman, Kenny, Jesberger, Choy, & Meltzer, 1995; Kathmann, Hochrein, Uwer, & Bondy, 2003; Lencer et al., 2004;), obsessive compulsive disorder (Farber, Clementz, & Swerdlow, 1997) attention deficit disorder (Jacobsen et al., 1996; Ross, Olincy, Harris, Sullivan, & Radant, 2000) and alcohol dependence (Kathmann, Wagner, Rendtorff, Schöchlin, & Engel, 1995). These studies and others have used other psychiatric disorders as pathological control groups for schizophrenia, although studies have also been done of pursuit in depression (Malaspina et al., 1994), and obsessive compulsive disorder (Clementz, Farber, Lam, & Swerdlow, 1996; Pallanti et al., 1996) in their own right.

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    Supported in part by grants to Dr. Friedman (USPHS, MH 47574 and the Scottish Rite Schizophrenia Research Program), and to Dr. Meltzer (MH 41684, MH 41594, John Pascal Sawyer Foundation, Mr. and Mrs. Milton Maltz and the Laureate Foundation).

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