Affiliations: [a] Beijing Institute for Brain Disorders, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China
| [b] Collaborative Innovation Center for Brain Disorders, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China
| [c] Fuwai Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, China
| [d] Xuan Wu Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China
| [e] Academy of Psychology and Behavior, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, China
| [f] School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, Peking University, Beijing, China
| [g] Speech and Hearing Research Center, Key Laboratory on Machine Perception (Ministry of Education), Peking University, Beijing, China
Correspondence:
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Correspondence to: Liang Li, School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, Peking University, Beijing, China. E-mail: liangli@pku.edu.cn.
Abstract: Background:Alzheimer’s disease (AD) has been confirmed as an influencing factor of visual impairment, but potential concomitant effects on visual and cognitive performance are not well understood. Objective:To provide a new method for early screening of Alzheimer’s disease and further explore the theoretical mechanism of the decline of whole visual and cognitive performance in AD. Methods:We studied 60 individuals without dementia as normal control (NC), 74 individuals with subjective cognitive decline (SCD), 60 individuals with amnesia mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), and 75 patients with AD on a battery of tests designed to measure multiple aspects of basic and higher-order visual perception and cognition. All subjects performed on same visual and cognitive test batteries. Results:The results showed both of four groups, with the stimulus-presentation time being longer, the visual-search performance improved, and both the eye interest-area first fixation duration and the interest-area-fixation count increased. Particularly under the noise-masking condition, the AD group performed the worst at stimulus-presentation times between 300 and 900 ms. The aMCI group, but not the SCD group, performed worse than the NC group at the stimulus-presentation time of either 300 or 500 ms. The interest-area-fixation count was higher in all the patient groups than that in the NC group, and distinguishable between participants with AD and those with SCD or aMCI. Conclusion:The visual-search performance combined with eye-movement tracking under the noise-masking condition can be used for distinguishing AD from normal aging, SCD, and aMCI.
