Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2022 Aug 26:13:945201.
doi: 10.3389/fneur.2022.945201. eCollection 2022.

Response times for reflexive saccades correlate with cognition in parkinson's disease, not disease severity or duration

Yaqin Yu  1   2 , Weihong Yan  1   2 , Xin Xu  3 , Kaili Zhang  1   2 , Lihong Si  1   2 , Xiaolei Liu  1   2 , Jinyu Wang  1   2 , Junling Song  1   2 , Huanxin Sun  1   2 , Xinyi Li  1   2
Affiliations

Response times for reflexive saccades correlate with cognition in parkinson's disease, not disease severity or duration

Yaqin Yu et al. Front Neurol. .

Abstract

Objective: Dementia is a common and serious non-motor symptom in Parkinson's disease (PD). We aimed to investigate the reflexive saccade in PD patients and explore its potential role as a biomarker for cognitive decline.

Methods: Using an infrared video-based eye tracker, we investigated reflexive saccades in 94 PD patients and 115 healthy controls (HCs). Saccadic parameters were compared between PD patients and HCs, and also among PD subgroups. The correlation of saccadic performance with disease duration, severity and cognition were further investigated.

Results: Compared with healthy controls, PD patients had prolonged and hypometric reflexive saccades even in early disease stage. Univariate and multivariate analysis showed that there was significant inverse relation between prolonged latency and MMSE in PD patients (P < 0.05); tremor dominant PD patients were more likely to have decreased velocity than non-tremor-dominant PD patients (P < 0.05); saccadic accuracy was found to have no significant relation with disease duration, H&Y staging or MMSE.

Conclusion: Reflexive saccadic performance was abnormal in PD and worsened with cognitive decline. The negative correlation between prolonged latency and MMSE scores may make the reflexive saccade a potential predictor for cognitive decline in Parkinson's disease.

Keywords: MMSE; Parkinson's disease; cognition; dementia; reflexive saccades.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Reflexive saccades in the PD group and the HC group. (A) mean latency of reflexive saccades; (B) mean gain of reflexive saccades; (C) mean velocity of reflexive saccades. PD, Parkinson's disease, HC, healthy control.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Mean latency of reflexive saccades in PD patients with normal cognition (PD-NC) and PD patients with impaired cognition (PD-IC).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Gonzalez-Latapi P, Bayram E, Litvan I, Marras C. Cognitive impairment in Parkinson's disease: epidemiology, clinical profile, protective and risk factors. Behav Sci (Basel). (2021) 11:74. 10.3390/bs11050074 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bloem BR, Okun MS, Klein C. Parkinson's disease. Lancet. (2021) 397:2284–303. 10.1016/S0140-6736(21)00218-X - DOI - PubMed
    1. Litvan I, Aarsland D, Adler CH, Goldman JG, Kulisevsky J, Mollenhauer B, et al. . MDS task force on mild cognitive impairment in parkinson's disease: critical review of PD-MCI. Mov Disord. (2011) 26:1814–24. 10.1002/mds.23823 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Aarsland D, Batzu L, Halliday GM, Geurtsen GJ, Ballard C, Ray Chaudhuri K, et al. . Parkinson disease-associated cognitive impairment. Nat Rev Dis Primers. (2021) 7:47. 10.1038/s41572-021-00280-3 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Weil RS, Costantini AA, Schrag AE. Mild Cognitive impairment in Parkinson's disease-what is it? Curr Neurol Neurosci Rep. (2018) 18:17. 10.1007/s11910-018-0823-9 - DOI - PMC - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources