Pupillary Responses in Recognizing Awareness in Persons with Profound Mental Retardation

Abstract

Pupil-size changes have been shown to indicate positive or negative reactions to several sensory and psychologic stimuli in normal persons. Whether this could be extended to mentally retarded patients who lack ability for verbal or motor behavior was tested by pupillary responses to several visual, tactile, and auditory stimuli. 24 institutionalized severely and profoundly retarded patients were examined by video camera in their usual environments rather than in a controlled laboratory setting. The videotapes were later projected onto a screen for pupil-size measurements. Pupils dilated with pleasant stimuli, including visualizing a familiar person, soft touch to the arm, music, and soft compliments. There was constriction with presenting an unfamiliar person, rough grasp of the arm, and abrasive noise and harsh commands. The findings demonstrate the existence of pupil reactivity in profoundly retarded persons and suggest such testing as a means of determining which elements of their environment are pleasing or aversive to them.

The use of pupillometry in the assessment of cardiac autonomic function in elite different type trained athletes

“…Moreover, the circuitous involvement of a large number of neural pathways in controlling the iris makes the pupil a rich source of information (Barbur 2004 Pupillometry is proved to be a useful tool in medical research and reveals the sub-clinical defects in autonomic function of various diseases (Fotiou et al 2007). Assessment of pupil reXex has previously been used in patients with heart failure (Keivanidou et al 2010), diabetes (Hreidarsson and Gundersen 1985;Piha and Halonen 1994), Parkinson's disease (Stergiou et al 2009), Alzheimer's disease (Fotiou et al 2000a, b), Myasthenia gravis (Tsiptsios et al 2008), alcoholism (Tan et al 1980), anxiety (Nagai et al 1980), depression (Sokolski and Demet 1996), Down's syndrome (Sacks and Smith 1989) and mental retardation (Chaney et al 1989). Pupillometry is further used in the investigation of central autonomic pathways , lateralization (Bär et al 2005), alertness or anxiety (Bitsios et al 2004), in Pavlonian conditioning (Reinhard et al 2006), cognitive ability (Verney et al 2004), memory load (Van Gerven et al 2004), attention (Karatekin 2004) and in the study of temporal orientation (Nuthmann and Van Der Meer 2005).…”

Using pupil size and heart rate to infer affective states during behavioral neurophysiology and neuropsychology experiments

“…Some of these states have been grouped into the regulation and expression of emotion (19–21). Because they provide a window into emotion regulation and expression, autonomic measures have been an important avenue for understanding cognitive and social aspects of special human populations, e.g., older adults (22, 23), individuals with intellectual disabilities (24, 25), or autism spectrum disorder (26–29), psychiatric populations (30), and unresponsive (minimally conscious) patients (31). …”

Reliability of assessing the sensory perception of children with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities: a case study

“…To overcome this threat, some researchers use physiological reactions (e.g. muscle tone) or measurements of brain activity to study the reactions of children with PIMD to sensory stimuli (Chaney et al 1989). These types of instruments are difficult to use in practice as they may be intrusive for the children.…”