Improving the reliability of eye tracking to diagnose concussion.

项目摘要/摘要 尽管脑震荡或轻度创伤性脑损伤(MTBI)影响了100多万人 每年美国人，并代表着巨大的社会负担，诊断仍然困难，而且 可靠的生物标记物仍然缺乏。长期目标是发展可测量的生理学 健康的人和患有mTBI的人之间的指标不同。这个 这个应用程序的总体目标是增加使用眼动的可靠性 诊断为脑震荡。大脑中专门负责视觉、前庭或眼球运动功能的回路 在大脑中无处不在，几乎任何对头部的打击都会影响视力和眼睛 动静。因此，许多研究人员都同意用眼球跟踪来监测眼球运动 行为表现出很大的揭示mTBI的潜力。研究结果，使用眼球运动 作为预测脑震荡的生物标志物，令人鼓舞，尽管还不足以证明其 临床应用。中心假设是，包括微眼跳在内的小眼睛 在眼球运动的连续体中，当凝视固定在目标上时，所做的运动将 提供一种诊断脑震荡的改进技术。核心假设将通过以下方式进行检验 两个具体目标：第一个目标是提高使用眼动的分辨率，以 诊断为脑震荡。为了实现这一目标，参与者将从超过 米尔萨普斯的300名学生。他们将进行大约25分钟的眼球运动任务，同时他们的眼睛 移动被记录下来。在接下来的运动赛季中头部受伤的运动员 然后将被邀请重新参加考试。第二个目标是表明监测眼球运动 在评估一个人从受伤中恢复到什么程度上也很有用。执行，执行 为了达到这个目的，恢复中的运动员将被邀请参加每周的眼球运动任务。这项研究 在这一应用中提出的建议是创新的，因为眼睛中的微眼跳被忽略了 跟踪研究；主要是因为它们需要高频率采样和专门的 软件。申请者拥有记录那些难以捉摸的人所需的硬件和软件 眼球运动和他的初步结果表明，包括微眼跳将 显著提高评估眼球运动行为的分辨率。这项研究建议 在这一应用中具有重要意义，因为眼睛跟踪一直被誉为最 获得诊断脑震荡的可靠和客观测量的有希望的技术， 而记录微眼跳有可能显著推动这项技术的发展。

PROJECT SUMMARY / ABSTRACT Although concussion or mild Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI) affects more than a million of Americans each year, and represents a great societal burden, diagnosis is still difficult, and reliable biomarkers are still lacking. The long-term goal is to develop measurable physiological indicators that differ between healthy individuals, and those who sustained an mTBI. The overall objective in this application is to increase the reliability of using eye-movements to diagnose concussion. Circuits in the brain, devoted to vision, vestibular or oculomotor function are so omnipresent in the brain that almost any blow to the head affects sight and eye movements. Therefore, many researchers agree that eye tracking to monitor oculomotor behavior shows great potential of revealing mTBI. Results from studies, using eye movements as a biomarker to predict concussion, are encouraging, albeit not sufficiently strong to proof its clinical utility. The central hypothesis is that the inclusion of microsaccades, the tiny eye movements made when the gaze is fixed on a target, in the continuum of eye movements, will provide an improved technique to diagnose concussion. The central hypothesis will be tested by two specific aims: the first one is to increase the resolution of using eye movements to diagnose concussion. To execute this aim, participants will be recruited among the more than 300 students of Millsaps. They will conduct a ~25-minute oculomotor task while their eye movements are recorded. Athletes who sustain a head injury during the following sports season will then be invited to retake the test. The second aim is to show that monitoring eye movements are also useful in assessing to what extent an individual has recovered from injury. To execute this aim, recovering athletes will be invited to take the oculomotor task weekly. The research proposed in this application is innovative, because microsaccades have been ignored in eye tracking studies; mainly because they require high frequency sampling and specialized software. The applicant possesses both the hard- and software needed to record those elusive eye movements and his preliminary results suggest that including microsaccades will significantly increase the resolution of assessing oculomotor behavior. The research proposed in this application is significant, because eye tracking has been hailed as one of the most promising techniques to obtain a reliable and objective measurement to diagnose concussion, and recording microsaccades has the potential to advance this technique significantly.