Identification Of Depression In Old Age Based On Eye Movement Characteristics

Background: Depression in the elderly refers to the depression that occurs in the elderly aged 60 and above,which is mainly manifested as persistent and significant depression.It is a common mental disorder in the elderly group and will have a serious impact on the quality of life of the elderly.With the acceleration of the aging process of China’s social population,there are more and more elderly patients with depression,and the problem of increasing the burden of depression and disease in the elderly population will become more prominent.The onset of geriatric depression is easy to be masked by aging or aging-related diseases,leading to the diagnosis of geriatric depression is more difficult than young depressed patients.Therefore,the early and accurate screening diagnosis is of great significance for the prevention and treatment of depression in the elderly.Eye-tracking technology is a noninvasive and convenient method for recording eye movements,and recent research have shown that eye movement indicators can be used as behavioral measures of perceived motor processing process and higher cognitive function of the brain,and characteristic eye movements can be used as a biological marker of abnormal inhibitory function in patients with mental illness.Eye-tracking techniques have been increasingly used to study attentional processing characteristics of depression,and the presence of characteristic eye movement patterns in depressed patients is widely reported,but current depressive eye movement studies focuses on young depressed patients.Objective: Collect elderly patients with depression and healthy elderly people in the execution of fixation point stability task,saccade task and free viewing task eye movement data,analysis of elderly patients with depression and healthy elderly eye features in simple eye movement task,for the construction can be applied to the auxiliary screening of elderly patients with depression eye movement indicators and auxiliary clinical objective diagnosis provides empirical basis.Methods: Collection in Jiangxi province psychiatric hospital psychological accord with the international classification of disease version 10(international classification of diseases-10,ICD-10)depression episode diagnosis criteria of elderly depression and community health elderly 16 cases for the study object,using Tobii Pro Spectrum eye data,compare the elderly depression and healthy elderly in the fixation point stability task,saccade task and free viewing task of eye movement characteristics.17 Hamilton Depression Scale and 14 Hamilton Anxiety Scale were used to evaluate the depression and anxiety of the elderly subjects,a simple mental state checklist(Mini-Mental State Examination,MMSE)was used to evaluate the mental state,and the scale score and eye movement indicators were analyzed to explore the correlation between the severity of depression and eye movement indicators.Results: The eye movement data of 35 subjects were collected.After excluding the unqualified data,32 subjects were selected.16 subjects were depression and 16 subjects were healthy control subjects.Statistical analysis of the eye movement data of both groups was conducted.(1)In the fixation stability task,the number of saccades was significantly more than in the healthy older group(t=2.158,P<0.05);(2)in the Prosaccade and antisaccade task,the saccade orientation correctrate was significantly lower in healthy controls(t=-2.38,P<0.05),and the reverse saccade accuracy was significantly lower in healthy controls(t=-2.32,P<0.05);(3)In the free-viewing task,The interaction of emotional face type and the group was not significant(P>0.05),Group main effect of fixations,saccades,mean pupil diameter(P<0.05),Elderly patients with depression had less fixations on emotional faces than healthy controls(F=4.98,P<0.05),More saccades than those in the healthy control group(F=4.84,P<0.05),The mean pupil diameter was greater than that of the healthy control elderly group(F=17.40,P<0.0001);(4)Significant positive correlation between saccade times and HAMD scale score in the interference condition of fixation stability task(r=0.52,P=0.005);(5)Towards saccade orientation and reverse saccade accuracy showed significant negative correlation with HAMD scale scores(r=-0.42,p=0.02;r=-0.38,P=0.04);(6)Duration of first fixation for a happy emotional face(r=-0.38,P=0.03),number of saccades of happy emotional faces(r=-0.37,P=0.04),happy emotional faces(r=-0.41,P=0.01)and sad emotional faces(r=-0.37,P=0.03)showed the significant negative correlation of fixation number with the HAMD scale score,A significant positive correlation was observed with the HAMD scale scores(r=0.41,P=0.02),average pupil diameter indicators showed significant positive correlation with HAMD scale scores(r=0.6,P≤0.001).Conclusion: Elderly patients with depression in the fixation point stable task,toward saccade and reverse saccade,free to watch simple eye task present characteristic eye movement pattern,and eye movement index difference related to the severity of elderly depression,shows that eye movement index can help to distinguish between elderly depression and healthy elderly,clinical diagnosis of elderly depression has application value.