Eye movement abnormalities and their role in neurocognition and clinical recovery
Poster B24, Tuesday, October%209, 11:30%20am%20-%201:00%20pm, Essex%20Ballroom
Kentaro Morita1, Shintaro Kawakami1, Susumu Morita1, Motoko Tani1, Maiko Tsuchiya1, Kazusa Ohta1, Akiko Kanehara1, Mariko Tada1, Naohiro Okada1,2, Shinsuke Koike1, Kiyoto Kasai1,2; 1Department of Neuropsychiatry, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan, 2The International Research Center for Neurointelligence (WPI-IRCN) at The University of Tokyo Institutes for Advanced Study (UTIAS), Tokyo, Japan
Introduction: Eye movement measures have been known to be impaired in a wide variety of mental illnesses, especially schizophrenia. However, the role of such findings beyond biological perspectives is still to be revealed. Methods: Data is being collected from healthy subjects, from subjects with chronic mental illness, and from a subgroup of participants of a longitudinal study named the "3R" study, which stands for the three “R”s of Remission, Relapse prevention, and Recovery. The primary aim of the 3R study is to follow the clinical and social outcomes of adolescents and young adults with recent first visits at mental health services. Results: Preliminary analyses using acquired cross-sectional data of 63 healthy subjects, 13 subjects with chronic schizophrenia, and 14 subjects with early psychosis revealed shorter scanpath length during free viewing tasks in both psychosis groups in comparison with healthy subjects. This measure was also positively correlated with the composite score of the Brief Assessment of Cognition in Schizophrenia (BACS) in subjects with early psychosis (R=0.55, p=0.04) and with total work hours per week from the Social Activity Assessment in subjects with chronic schizophrenia (R=0.62, p=0.03). Scanpath length is a measure of visual exploration known to be impaired in subjects with schizophrenia, and cognitive impairments due to such eye movement abnormalities from an early stage of the illness may be related to these findings. Results from analyses including added data will be presented and interpreted in the context of current literature.
Topic Area: Neurocognition