Evaluation of early cognitive impairment from the modeling of eye movements
The objective of this project is to develop new models of eye movement tracking that allow evaluating the cognitive processes associated with them, diagnose neurodegenerative diseases early and develop abilities to expand the perceptual range. Our research group, with the collaboration of the Department of Psychology of the University of Potsdam (Germany) and the Municipal Hospital of Acute “Leónidas Lucero” of Bahía Blanca, developed a method to diagnose and measure the early cognitive deterioration from the modeling of the eye movement.
The way in which healthy people and patients at a very early stage of the disease process information during reading was evaluated through the eyetracking technique. To this end, he designed an appropriate stimulus material that allows us to measure the performance of executive memory, working memory, semantic memory and retrieval memory. The main objective of this project is to continue with the study carried out, in order to advance in the knowledge on the subject of early diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases from eye movements during reading. In this regard, the scope of the proposed technique will be studied, that is, what is the minimum detectable deterioration.
To this end, the aim will be to develop new more rigorous models, the application of the technique to a greater number of patients will be evaluated and a temporary follow-up will be carried out. On the other hand, also using an eyetraker, a cognitive-behavioral evaluation system (e.g., a vehicle simulator) will be developed and constructed to evaluate the human cognitive process during the driving of a vehicle. The aim is to develop another alternative method of evaluating cognitive deterioration from the performance of another daily task such as driving a vehicle.
The objectives of this line are three: to study the cognitive process associated with the driving of a vehicle, to generate strategies for evaluating the driver’s capacity and to develop training strategies for the extension of the perceptual range (eg, perceptual learning) for the purposes of improve the safety of driving a vehicle.