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From the Bullard and Denny-Brown Laboratories, the Division of Behavioral Neurology and Neuroscience of the Harvard Neurology Department, and the Charles A. Dana Research Institute of the Beth Israel Hospital, Boston, MA.
Clinical accounts of Alzheimer's disease (AD) suggest that some patients exhibit markedly diminished curiosity and initiative early in the course of their illness. Such behavioral changes are extremely difficult to measure experimentally. We studied one aspect of curiosity by measuring exploratory eye movements in response to provocative visual stimuli in 12 patients with probable AD and 10 matched controls. Subjects viewed slides, each of which contained an incongruous or irregular figure paired with a congruous or regular one. Unlike controls, who spent significantly more time viewing the incongruous stimuli, AD patients distributed their viewing time equally and spent significantly less time than controls looking at the novel stimuli. Additionally, when presented with picture slides containing an unexpected element, AD patients exhibited diminished visual exploration overall and decreased attention to the incongruous part. Further analyses suggest that the results cannot be adequately explained by a general decline in cognition or by problems with ocular motility or directing visual attention. We conclude that AD patients exhibit diminished curiosity which can be measured by the study of exploratory eye movements.
Address correspondence and reprint requests to Dr. Kirk R. Daffner, Behavioral Neurology Unit, Beth Israel Hospital, 330 Brookline Avenue, Boston, MA 02215.
Supported by the Isobel and Marvin Slomowitz Pilot Research Grant from the Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders Association (PRG-90–150).
Presented in part at the 43rd annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology, Boston, MA, April 1991, and at the Boston Society of Neurology and Psychiatry, May 1991.
Received January 30, 1991. Accepted for publication in final form July 16, 1991.
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