Saccadic and smooth pursuit eye movements in memory-impaired elderly people

The aim of the study was to compare eye movements recorded in 14 non-demented memory impaired elderly subjects with those of 36 sex- and education-matched controls. Eye movements were recorded with the bitemporal electrooculographic technique, and analyzed with a personal computer. Saccades were elicited in accordance with reflexive, predictive and antisaccade paradigms. Smooth pursuit eye movements were elicited with a triangular ramp paradigm. The memory-impaired subjects showed a higher prevalence of increased reflexive saccade latency and a lower smooth pursuit performance index. In addition, we detected a correlation between antisaccade and reflexive saccade latencies. Our results showed very slight differences in eye movement parameters. However, our findings are in keeping with the hypothesis of a subtle involvement of differing cortical areas in memory impaired subjects.