Affiliations: [a] Department of Optometry and Vision Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia | [b] Department of Optometry, Deakin University, Waurn Ponds, Australia | [c] Department of Psychiatry, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia | [d] Neuropsychiatry Unit, Royal Melbourne Hospital, Melbourne, Australia | [e]
Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, Melbourne, Australia
Correspondence:
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Correspondence to: Amanda Douglass, B Optom, PhD, Department of Optometry, Deakin University, 75 Pigdons Road, Waurn Ponds, VIC 3216, Australia. E-mail amanda.douglass@deakin.edu.au.
Abstract: Background:Saccadic paradigms display changes across a number of degenerative conditions reflecting changes in the oculomotor pathway which in some conditions have been linked to disease presentation. Objective:To examine a novel range of saccadic paradigms in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD). Methods:Prosaccade, predictive, self-paced, memory-guided, and anti-saccade tasks were examined in bvFTD patients and controls. Results:A significant increase in latency for the bvFTD group was seen in all tasks. Self-paced saccades are reduced in number, memory-guided saccades display an increase in errors. Predictive saccades show an increased latency that does not remain when prosaccade latency changes are accounted for. While changes were seen across a range of paradigms, no individual task completely separated bvFTD from control participants. Conclusion:bvFTD patients as a group display a number of changes on saccadic testing which may reflect the frontal lobe changes seen in this condition.
