Eyelander game evaluation and Parkinsons and Spatial Memory studies published

April 17, 2019April 18, 2019 Timothy Hodgson Eyelander, Parkinsons, Publications, research

Research in patients both young and old can be difficult, time consuming and stressful to carry out (e.g. due to the ethical approval process, patient recruitment and practical difficulties in testing patients with physical disabilities etc). Yet the importance and potential benefits to patients themselves of such research far out weighs the difficulty entailed in conducting it.

Two of my recently published papers reflect the outcome of patient based projects. Both studies use tasks which require viewers to search through items on a screen using saccadic eye movements. The first addressed the issue of working memory and oculomotor control in Parkinsons disease, a topic I have been researching since the late 1990s. Whilst the second reports the clinical trial evaluating the effectiveness of the Eyelander video game for children who have had neurological injury leading to partial visual field loss (hemianopia).

In the first study, published in the April 2019 edition of the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience we recorded eye movements while participants performed a version of the CANTAB Spatial Working Memory task which requires patients to search through boxes on a computer screen to find hidden tokens. I first had the idea to do this study whilst watching patients performing this task on a touch screen when I was a post-doctoral research fellow at Charing Cross Hospital, London. I could see that patients were using eye movements a lot in this token “foraging” task, but at the time we didnt have the technology to track their eye movements properly. It was only later that suitable eye tracking equipment and software became available to carry out the research. Amongst other findings the paper shows that people with Parkinsons don’t use eye movements to plan ahead or look back at locations they’ve already searched as effectively as controls, most likely due to an imbalance of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the prefrontal cerebral cortex.

The second paper, published in the December 2018 edition of Journal of Visual Impairment and Blindness describes the evaluation of our visual search game for children with partial visual loss following brain injury affecting the visual parts of the cerebral cortex. The results showed children were able to play the game at home unsupervised and that it had a positive effect on parallel measures of functional visual ability which was similar in magnitude to effects reported for visual search training in adult with partial visual loss following stroke. The Eyelander game is now available for anyone to play online, so please take a look. We are also starting a collaborative project with Great Ormond Street Hospital to evaluate its effectiveness for treating visual field loss following neurosurgical procedures in children.

Parkinsons Research Update

March 10, 2018March 10, 2018 Timothy Hodgson General news, Parkinsons, Public Engagement, research

This week is the AGM of the Lincoln and District Parkinsons group of which I am proud to be honorary president. I want to thank everyone from the local group and beyond who has participated in our eye tracking studies over the last few years. I am currently writing reports for research journals about the results but here are some of the interesting findings:

Memory Game Study: We asked people to play a memory game and used the eye tracker to measure eye movements while they searched for tokens hidden in boxes on a screen. We found that people with Parkinsons looked ahead and looked back less with their eyes when playing the game. We think Parkinsons affects planning ahead and keeping track of where you’ve already been when you’re searching for something.

card game pic — Where people look in the card guessing game

Guessing Game Study: We also asked people to play a card guessing game while they wore an eye tracking helmet. They had to describe the thing that was on the card (e.g. “elephant”; “apple” etc.). When someone with Parkinsons was describing, we found players got through less cards in the allotted time, but people with Parkinsons were just as good at guessing when someone else was describing.

People without Parkinsons made eye contact to different degrees when playing the guessing game. We think the results show that other people making eye contact might help someone with Parkinsons get their words out better, as well as helping the other person to listen.

Please get in touch via e-mail or this blog page to let me know if you have any questions and let me know what you think about the findings?

Positively Parkinsons @ Lincoln

November 13, 2017March 10, 2018 Timothy Hodgson Conferences, Impact, Parkinsons, Public Engagement

This Friday 17th November we will be hosting Lincoln’s first Positively Parkinsons event in conjunction with Parkinsons UK and the Lincoln and District Parkinsons group.
The event provides an opportunity to find out more about the condition and meet people with Parkinsons. It will include sessions in which you can find out about a day in the life of a Parkinsons nurse as well as a talk from former Lincoln psychology student Jade Pickering who is now carrying out research into Parkinsons disease as part of her PhD at the University of Manchesters BEAM research group.

The event takes place in the Sarah Swift building on the main University of Lincoln campus from 10-3pm. Members of the public, Lincoln staff and students are welcome to join us. To book your place or find out more contact Dave Swindells (dswindells@parkinsons.org.uk).

Public Engagement Project Success!

October 10, 2017March 10, 2018 Timothy Hodgson Impact, Public Engagement, research

Over the next 12 months I will be busy as co-investigator on a grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council as part of the Public Engagement with Research Catalyst scheme.

Led by School of History and Heritage’s Prof Carenza Lewis (of Time Team fame), the PEARL (Public Engagement for All in Research at Lincoln) project aims to enrich the culture of public engagement in research across the university, putting it on an equal footing with research and teaching.

Public engagement with research seeks to inform, inspire, upskill and enrich individuals and communities. PEARL will establish Lincoln as a model for other universities in the extent to which it values and supports staff and student public engagement activity.

The project will initially seek views of staff and students to evaluate perceptions, strengths and weaknesses of how the University currently e EPSRC ngages non-academics in its research, but there will also be opportunities to get more hands on with PEARL including funding for public engagement events, a conference and awards so watch this space!

Lincoln and District Parkinsons Group

February 22, 2017 Timothy Hodgson Parkinsons

I am very honoured to have been invited to be Branch President for the Lincoln and District Branch of Parkinsons UK for 2017-18.

I have been working with members of the local group over the last 4 years investigating the control of eye movements in Parkinsons. This has been a long standing research interest off and on since my days as a post-doctoral research fellow at Charing Cross Hospital in London.

Our research has shown that there is a particular “marker” of Parkinsons in eye movements, namely “multi-stepping” or jerkiness of eye movements measurable under certain conditions with a computerised eye tracker. In other situations some people with Parkinsons appear to be slightly more distractable and not organise eye movements as efficiently as healthy people when carrying out problem solving and memory tasks.

parkinsons saccades — Multistepping saccades

The research has potential in the future to help in the early diagnosis of Parkinsons, the assessment of cognitive impairments in Parkinsons as well as helping people with Parkinsons understand the subtle ways in which the condition might affect them beyond the obvious symptoms seen in other sort of movement.

I’ve also observed that People with Parkinson are extra-ordinarily nice and generous people with an enthusiasm for research. I continue to do whatever I can in my own little way to go the extra mile (or 20!) to support them, so I was very pleased to accept the appointment as Branch President. I am looking forward to meeting established and new members at the Annual General Meeting next month in Bracebridge Heath and giving a short update on recent research.

Timothy Hodgson – Cognitive Neuroscience

Research into vision, eye movements and cognitive function