Parsing cognition in schizophrenia using saccadic eye movements: a selective overview

Eye movements provide a behavioural measure of sensorimotor processing and higher cognitive functions of the brain. With the development of novel para digms that can be used for the study of various cognitive operations, sacca dic eye movements in particular. have become increasingly popular. Patients with schizophrenia have neurocognitive impairments that can be readily inv estigated with these paradigms. From animal, human lesion and neuroimaging studies, the cerebral centres underlying saccadic eye movements have been i dentified. The areas of the prefrontal cortex include the dorsolateral pref rontal cortex, the frontal eye fields, the supplementary eye fields, and th e anterior cingulate cortex. Pathology of saccadic eve movements, therefore , provides information on the functional status of the underlying neural ci rcuitry in brain disorders such as schizophrenia. In this paper, we evaluat e: (i) methodological considerations that are central to the design and app lication of saccadic paradigms: (ii) brain activation that is associated wi th saccadic paradigms: (iii) recent findings in healthy subjects and schizo phrenic patients; (iv) saccadic abnormalities in other psychiatric and neur ological disorders and in individuals at risk for developing schizophrenia. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.