Eye movements in patients with mild cognitive impairment

Objective: This study of thesis aims to comparatively investigate the saccadic and cognitive impairments observed in patients diagnosed with the Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and healthy controls Method: Study included 14 amnestic MCI, 8 non-amnestic MCI and 17 healthy controls. Neurocognitive battery and eye movement recordings are applied to all of the participants. Infrared technology is used in the eye movement recording. Velocity, latency and reaction time are recorded as the saccade paradigms of the eye. Results: Significant extension in prosaccade and antisaccade reaction times is observed in the amnestic MCI patients. After a paired comparison between groups for the saccadic velocity means, a significant difference couldn't be found either. For the antisaccade paradigm, the number of correct saccades are found significantly lower with the amnestic MCI patients. Significant differences are seen in neuropsychological test scores after an examination between groups. Similiarly, corelations are found with the paired comparison between groups in neuropsychological test and saccade values. Conclusion: Corelation between the eye movements of the MCI patients and cognitive functions is observed. In comparison to healthy controls, the higher impairment shown in the eye movements of MCI patients confirms the literature. In this aspect, a longitudinal study with a larger sample size may provide more significant results for future studies.