Although it is a relatively well-known fact in the medical world, that individuals with psychotic illnesses have abnormal eye movements, it has as of yet, not been used as a means to diagnoses a disorder.
A new study published in Biological Psychiatry assessed whether eye movement tests could be used to detect schizophrenia.
The study involved a number of eye tests in which participants were asked to track slow moving objects with their eyes, inspect a variety of everyday scenes and given instructions to stare at a single unmoving target.
It was found those participants with schizophrenia struggled to track slow moving objects, with their eye movements falling behind the object followed by rapid movements to catch up with it. When inspecting everyday scenes, schizophrenics followed an abnormal pattern and struggled to maintain focus on a single unmoving target.
Using this study on a new test group allowed researchers to effectively distinguish between those with or without schizophrenia with 98% accuracy. These findings could have significant implications with current assessments of schizophrenia being very expensive and time-consuming; however more research will need to be conducted to see at what point signs of irregular eye movement are apparent and also how to distinguish people with other psychiatric disorders.
Source: "Simple Viewing Tests Can Detect Eye Movement Abnormalities That Distinguish Schizophrenia Cases from Controls with Exceptional Accuracy” by Philip J. Benson, Sara A. Beedie, Elizabeth Shephard, Ina Giegling, Dan Rujescu, and David St. Clair (doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2012.04.019). The article appears in Biological Psychiatry, Volume 72, Issue 9 (November 1, 2012), published by Elsevier
