Eyes on dementia: an overview of the interplay between eye movements and cognitive decline

• Published in: Journal of medicine and life 2023-05, Vol.16 (5), p.642-662
• Main Authors: Ionescu, Alec, Ştefănescu, Emanuel, Strilciuc, Ştefan, Grad, Diana Alecsandra, Mureşanu, Dafin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Activities of daily living; Alzheimer's disease; Cognitive ability; Dementia; Dementia disorders; Eye movements; Memory; Neuropsychology; Patients; Review
• ISSN: 1844-3117; 1844-122X; 1844-3117
• DOI: 10.25122/jml-2023-0217

The economic and disease burden of dementia is forecasted to continue increasing. Considering its cognitive effects, timely diagnosis is important in developing a stage-based treatment plan and gathering data to support advocacy efforts and plan healthcare and social services. Eye-tracking technology has emerged as an efficient diagnostic tool in clinical practice and experimental studies. This review aimed to comprehensively analyze various aspects of eye-tracking technology, including pupillometry parameters, eye movements, eye-tracking devices, and neuropsychological tools. We conducted a systematic review retrieving articles published in the last ten years from six databases. Our results provide a complex overview for each included form of dementia/cognitive decline in terms of patient characteristics (age, sex-disaggregated by included pathologies), inclusion and exclusion criteria, devices, and neuropsychological tools. We also summarized findings on fixation stability tasks, saccadic evaluation, pupillometry, scene perception, object recognition, spatial memory, eye-tracking video tasks, and visual search. The eye-tracking method has become more common in cognitive assessments.