Queen’s study aims at early diagnosis for ADHD and Parkinson’s disease
Monday July 13, 2009
Eye movement tests developed by Queen’s University researchers to aid in understanding childhood brain development and healthy aging may also help in the diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and detecting the early onset of Parkinson’s disease. The project has received close to $1 million in recent funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).
“An important aspect of what makes us human is the ability to control our behaviour,” says Physiology professor Douglas Munoz, who leads the study. “Our project investigates how the brain provides this control by observing eye movements. Our experiments have been designed to combine high speed eye movement recording with modern brain imaging techniques to identify brain regions that control our behaviour.”
To test this, the team designed a simple yet ingenious experiment. Participants from a wide range of age groups were placed in a magnetic resonance imaging unit that measured their brain activity. While in the unit, they were shown a series of lights and asked to move their eyes toward or away from the lights. The speed and accuracy of their eye movements were recorded and correlated to the activity being documented in specific areas of their brains.
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