Changes in eye tracking during clinical stabilization in Schizophrenia

Is eye movement dysfunction a biological marker for schizophrenia? A methodological review.

“…Although persons with schizophrenia have more globally accurate pursuit during attention enhancement, they also continue to have more inaccurate pursuit than normal persons under such conditions (Holzman et al, 1976;lacono & Koenig, 1983;, although attention enhancement may effectively reduce the frequency of large (greater than 4 degrees) saccades (Spohn et al, 1988) among these subjects. Similarly, test-retest studies suggest that global accuracy of pursuit remains relatively stable for 2-8 weeks (Rea et al, 1989;Siever et al, 1986;Spohn et al, 1988). Van den Bosch, Rosendaal, and Mol (1987), however, found that accuracy of pursuit as measured by an error deviation score significantly decreases after 1 month in persons with schizophrenia, but that the correlation between a patient's performance at 1-and 2-month retests with measurements taken at initial hospitalization was high (0.69-0.78).…”

“…Although Kraepelin (1919Kraepelin ( /1971) had mentioned the potential significance of Diefendorf and Dodge's (1908) finding, not until a study by Holzman, Proctor, and Hughes (1973) was this interesting area of investigation further pursued. The Holzman et al study, along with numerous other reports (Bartfai, Levander, & Sedvall, 1983;Blackwood, St. Clair, & Muir, 1988;Cegalis & Sweeney, 1979Holzman, Levy, & Proctor, 1976;Holzman et al, 1974;lacono, Peloquin, Lumry, Valentine, & Tuason, 1982;lacono, Tuason, & Johnson, 1981;Kuechenmeister, Linton, Mueller, & White, 1977;Kufferle, Grunberger, Linzmayer, & Saletu, 1988;May, 1979;Mialet & Pichot, 1981;Pass, Salzman, Klorman, Kaskey, & Klein, 1978;Rea, Sweeney, Solomon, Walsh, & Frances, 1989;Scarone, Gambini, Hafele, Bellodi, & Smeraldi, 1987;Shagass, Amadeo, & Overton, 1974;Shagass, Roemer, & Amadeo, 1976;Spohn, Coyne, & Spray, 1988), demonstrated that persons with schizophrenia have less accurate smooth pursuit eye movements than normal persons and nonpsychotic (personality-disordered and unipolar-depressive-disordered) patients. Some studies, however, have failed to find a significant difference between accuracy of smooth pursuit in persons with schizophrenia and in other groups, especially patients with bipolar affective disorder (Holzman, Solomon, Levin, & Waternaux, 1984;lacono & Koenig, 1983;lacono et al, 1982;Klein, Salzman, Jones, & Ritzier, 1976;Lipton, Levin, & Holzman, 1980;Pivik, 1979aPivik, , 1979bSalzman, Klein, & Strauss, 1978;…”

“…The frequency of large saccades may decrease when neuroleptic dosage is increased. Although large saccade frequency may decrease, the frequency of small saccades seems to increase with time and neuroleptic treatment, resulting in an overall small increase in saccade frequency for patients with schizophrenia (Rea et al, 1989). Spohn et al (1988), however, reported that a small group of patients (6 of 8) who were removed from medication demonstrated an increase in the frequency of large saccades in the absence of a detectable increase in facial-oral tardive dyskinesia.…”

Pharmacological treatment effects on eye movement control

“…However, other studies have reported that patients treated with mostly first-generation antipsychotics performed worse than untreated patients giving rise to the hypothesis that antipsychotic medication may impair smooth pursuit (Bartfai, Levander, Nyback, Berggren, & Schalling, 1985; Bartfai, Levander, & Sedvall, 1983; Kufferle et al, 1990). Another study with nine schizophrenia patients showed that although qualitative smooth pursuit ratings remained unaltered during a 4 weeks follow-up period under first generation antipsychotic medication, the nature of catch-up saccade responses to pursuit gain disturbances changed significantly, with a 57% increase in small saccades and a 77% reduction in larger catch up saccades (Rea, Sweeney, Solomon, Walsh, & Frances, 1989). …”

Strong Inference, Theory Testing, and the Neuroanatomy of Schizophrenia

“…Another aspect that may have affected performance is the presence of antipsychotic medications, or neural changes arising from the effects of chronic administration of antipsychotic medications. While multiple studies have shown that the presence of neuroleptics is unlikely to cause eye tracking disorder in observers with schizophrenia (Levy et al, 1993), there are, however, indications that acute administration of antipsychotics may affect the intricacies of saccadic activity during tracking (Rea et al, 1989;Spohn, Coyne & Spray, 1988), and gain deficits may be exacerbated either through chronic medication administration (Hutton et al, 2001) or through use of the atypical antipsychotic, clozapine (Friedman, Jesberger & Meltzer, 1992;Litman et al, 1994). The largely chronic nature of the current sample means that the effects of long-term medication are relevant to the current study, and similarly, the vast majority of participants (81 of 95) were receiving treatment with atypical antipsychotic medications.…”