Abstract:

A new tool for monitoring brain function: eye tracking goes beyond assessing attention to measuring central nervous system physiology
Concussion and other forms of brain injury, elevated intracranial pressure, dementia and myriadother function-impairing neurologic conditions are not always detectable with conventional means. The lack of accurate diagnostics, biomarkers, and outcome measures has a devastating impact. Individual patients may suffer in obscurity, self-medicate into an addictive spiral, have impaired professional activity, and develop failed interpersonal relationships. Without accurate diagnostics it is impossible to know the incidence of the problem or assess its societal impact. The lack of appropriate classification schemes and objective outcome measures for patients entering clinical trials for concussion and other forms of traumatic brain injury (TBI) contributes to the failure of such trials for therapeutics and prophylactics at great expense to the research and development community and those it hopes to serve, including athletes, students and hapless victims of trauma. Recently Dr. Uzma Samadani’s group published two manuscripts describing a novel algorithm for eye tracking that will be useful for concussion, other forms of TBI and other neuropathologies. Eye tracking assesses brain function rather than appearance or electrical activity, and thus represents a relatively newer modality for assessment of central nervous system integrity. The difference between the two papers published by their group and nearly all prior eye tracking publications, is that these new papers utilize non-spatially calibrated eye tracking. Rather than assess what someone chooses to look at, the tracking measures how well the eyes are capable of moving.