Impaired eye movements in Parkinson's disease and their relationship to top –down and bottom–up neural processing

ConclusionsPD's visual search movements may change depending on the meaningfulness of visual stimuli. Further, the abnormal visual search movements in PD may be due to insufficient bottom –up processing and excessive top–down processing.Plain Language SummaryParkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder that can cause eye movement disorders. People with PD may have difficulty searching for and processing visual information. In this study, we investigated how meaningfulness affects visual search movements and visual information processing in people with PD. We measured eye movements and brain activity in response to different types of visual stimuli, including meaningful and meaningless images, and compared them to a group of healthy control participants. Our results showed that PD patients had fewer eye movements and different brain activity patterns compared to healthy controls, regardless of the meaningfulness of the visual stimuli. However, we also found that the meaningfulness of visual stimuli had an effect on visual search movements in PD patients. This suggests that meaningfulness can impact the way people with PD process visual information. Understanding these differences could help in the development of new therapies to improve visual processing in people with PD.
Source: Brain and Behavior - Category: Neurology Authors: Tags: ORIGINAL ARTICLE Source Type: research