TEMPLR - Version 1.0

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  Tracking Eye Movement and Pupil Light Response in dementia (TEMPLR)

• IRAS ID

  318430

• Contact name

  Thomas Wilcockson

• Contact email

  t.wilcockson@lboro.ac.uk

• Sponsor organisation

  Loughborough University

• Duration of Study in the UK

  3 years, 0 months, 0 days

• Research summary

  The purpose of this study is to investigate whether pupillary responses and a certain class of eye movements (known as saccadic eye movements) can be used as a possible means of discriminating between normal age­related changes in performance and those associated with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Previous research has indicated that saccadic eye-movement may be predictive of cognitive decline (e.g. Wilcockson, et al., 2019). The performance of AD patients on the anti­saccade eye tracking task has been found to be significantly different on average to the performance of healthy participants. In particular, AD patients have been found to generate more errors, specifically uncorrected errors, where a saccade is produced towards the target and is not corrected to look away from the target. The proposed research will explore other pupillary markers of cognitive decline, specifically, resting pupil size, pupil light reflex, and pupil dilation as a result of anticipatory saccades. The overall aim of the study is to compare and contrast saccadic eye-movement and pupillometry in order to explore the utility of using pupil light reflex as an indicator of cognitive decline in dementia.

  Our research aims to identify a new focus for disease monitoring and assessment in pharmacological drug trials. If indeed pupillary responses are as useful a biomarker of AD as saccadic eye-movement tasks, then simple to use pupillometry tasks which could be utilised to easily and cheaply monitor and/or diagnose AD and Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). Such pupillometry tasks could be programmed into devices like smartphones, therefore this research could demonstrate a valuable and affordable means of supporting clinicians who work with cognitive decline.

• REC name

  North East - York Research Ethics Committee

• REC reference

  23/NE/0175

• Date of REC Opinion

  26 Sep 2023

• REC opinion

  Favourable Opinion