Lectures and seminars Research seminar at Division of Eye and Vision - Josefine Waldthaler

Title: Alterations of eye movements as correlates for motor and cognitive symptoms
in Parkinson’s disease.
Parkinson’s disease (PD) involves much more than just progressive motor decline. In recent years, a spectrum of
various non-motor symptoms has come to attention, such as cognitive, emotional, autonomic, and oculomotor
dysfunction.
Our research aims at understanding how alterations of eye movements relate to different symptoms of
PD as well as their complex interactions, with the long-term goal of aiding diagnostic considerations and
Therapeutic decision making.
 

In this talk, I would like to present our results from several studies investigating the effect of PD and its Therapies (dopamine replacement therapy and deep brain stimulation) on arrange of different oculomotor tasks, including simple reflexive and voluntary saccades but also text reading. Furthermore, the potential of combining eye tracking with other non invasive neuroimaging methods (magneto- and electroencephalography) to explore underlying changes in brain activity will be discussed based on promising results from our pilot studies.