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Free visual exploration of natural movies in schizophrenia

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Abstract

Background

Eye tracking dysfunction (ETD) observed with standard pursuit stimuli represents a well-established biomarker for schizophrenia. How ETD may manifest during free visual exploration of real-life movies is unclear.

Methods

Eye movements were recorded (EyeLink®1000) while 26 schizophrenia patients and 25 healthy age-matched controls freely explored nine uncut movies and nine pictures of real-life situations for 20 s each. Subsequently, participants were shown still shots of these scenes to decide whether they had explored them as movies or pictures. Participants were additionally assessed on standard eye-tracking tasks.

Results

Patients made smaller saccades (movies (p = 0.003), pictures (p = 0.002)) and had a stronger central bias (movies and pictures (p < 0.001)) than controls. In movies, patients’ exploration behavior was less driven by image-defined, bottom-up stimulus saliency than controls (p < 0.05). Proportions of pursuit tracking on movies differed between groups depending on the individual movie (group*movie p = 0.011, movie p < 0.001). Eye velocity on standard pursuit stimuli was reduced in patients (p = 0.029) but did not correlate with pursuit behavior on movies. Additionally, patients obtained lower rates of correctly identified still shots as movies or pictures (p = 0.046).

Conclusion

Our results suggest a restricted centrally focused visual exploration behavior in patients not only on pictures, but also on movies of real-life scenes. While ETD observed in the laboratory cannot be directly transferred to natural viewing conditions, these alterations support a model of impairments in motion information processing in patients resulting in a reduced ability to perceive moving objects and less saliency driven exploration behavior presumably contributing to alterations in the perception of the natural environment.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all participants for their valuable contribution to this study. We are grateful to Katja Kölkebeck, MD, Anne Vosseler and the staff of Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy of University Hospital in Muenster for support with recruitment procedures. Last but not least we thank Dominik Grotegerd, PhD, for support in experiment setup. IA, MS, and MD were supported by the Elite Network Bavaria, funded by the Bavarian State Ministry for Research and Education.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Muenster, Albert-Schweitzer-Campus 1, Geb. A9, 48149, Muenster, Germany

    Johanna Elisa Silberg, Teresa Fasshauer, Karen Silling & Rebekka Lencer

  2. Chair of Human-Machine Communication, Technical University Munich, Munich, Germany

    Ioannis Agtzidis, Mikhail Startsev & Michael Dorr

  3. Department of Neurology and Institute of Psychology II, University of Luebeck, Lübeck, Germany

    Andreas Sprenger

  4. Otto-Creutzfeldt Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Muenster, Germany

    Rebekka Lencer

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  1. Johanna Elisa Silberg
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Correspondence to Rebekka Lencer.

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Silberg, J.E., Agtzidis, I., Startsev, M. et al. Free visual exploration of natural movies in schizophrenia. Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci 269, 407–418 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00406-017-0863-1

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