眼动追踪技术在视觉系统研究等各个领域得到了广泛的应用,神经科学,心理学,和人机交互,具有新的临床意义。在我们研究的这个初步阶段,我们引入了创新的虚拟现实技术的试点测试,旨在跟踪健康个体的头部和眼睛运动。该工具的开发是为了评估轻度创伤性脑损伤(mTBI)的存在,鉴于动眼功能缺陷与此类损伤的频繁关联。除了眼球追踪,由于这些技术的互补性,我们还整合了功能磁共振成像,提供对神经激活模式和行为反应的见解,从而提供对动眼功能的全面了解。我们使用功能磁共振成像来评估动眼功能:平滑追踪(SP),扫视,反扫视,和光动力学眼球震颤(OKN)。在扫描之前,在受试者执行与功能磁共振成像相同的任务的情况下,使用具有集成眼睛和头部跟踪功能的VR护目镜系统进行测试。测试了31个健康成人对照(HCs),目的是识别与这些任务相关的大脑区域,并收集初步规范,以便以后与脑震荡受试者进行比较。功能磁共振成像结果显示以下峰值激活区域:SP-cuneus,顶叶上小叶,旁中央小叶,下顶叶小叶(IPL)小脑扁桃体(CT);扫视-额中回(MFG),中央后回,额内侧回;反扫视-前肌,IPL,MFG;OKN-颞中回,ACC,中央后回,MFG,CT。这些结果表明,在健康对照组中,与动眼任务表现相关的大脑区域,大多数突出显示的区域与受脑震荡影响的区域相对应。这表明,在实施动眼评估中,易患mTBI的大脑区域的参与,加上脑震荡后常见的动眼困难,可能会导致使用眼睛跟踪任务找到客观的生物标志物。
Eye-tracking techniques have gained widespread application in various fields including research on the visual system, neurosciences, psychology, and human-computer interaction, with emerging clinical implications. In this preliminary phase of our study, we introduce a pilot test of innovative virtual reality technology designed for tracking head and eye movements among healthy individuals. This tool was developed to assess the presence of mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), given the frequent association of oculomotor function deficits with such injuries. Alongside eye-tracking, we also integrated fMRI due to the complementary nature of these techniques, offering insights into both neural activation patterns and behavioural responses, thereby providing a comprehensive understanding of oculomotor function. We used fMRI with tasks evaluating oculomotor functions: Smooth Pursuit (SP), Saccades, Anti-Saccades, and Optokinetic Nystagmus (OKN). Prior to the scanning, the testing with a system of VR goggles with integrated eye and head tracking was used where subjects performed the same tasks as those used in fMRI. 31 healthy adult controls (HCs) were tested with the purpose of identifying brain regions associated with these tasks and collecting preliminary norms for later comparison with concussed subjects. HCs\' fMRI results showed following peak activation regions: SP-cuneus, superior parietal lobule, paracentral lobule, inferior parietal lobule (IPL), cerebellartonsil (CT); Saccades-middle frontal gyrus (MFG), postcentral gyrus, medial frontal gyrus; Anti-saccades-precuneus, IPL, MFG; OKN-middle temporal gyrus, ACC, postcentral gyrus, MFG, CT. These results demonstrated brain regions associated with the performance on oculomotor tasks in healthy controls and most of the highlighted areas are corresponding with those affected in concussion. This suggests that the involvement of brain areas susceptible to mTBI in implementing oculomotor evaluation, taken together with commonly reported oculomotor difficulties post-concussion, may lead to finding objective biomarkers using eye-tracking tasks.