20.500.12556/DiRROS-25670 Smooth pursuit and memory saccades are impaired in early-stage Parkinson’s disease patients Introduction: Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease caused by degeneration of dopaminergic neurons in substantia nigra pars compacta (SNc). One of the most prevalent symptoms is eye movement impairment, presenting in 75% of PD patients, which have fragmented and hypometric smooth pursuit movements with prolonged latency. We aimed to investigate differences in smooth pursuit, reflexive, and memory-guided saccades and antisaccades between patients with early-stage PD and healthy controls.Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study with idiopathic PD patients in early stage of disease (Hoehn and Yahr stage 0, 1 and 2) and healthy controls. The impairment of smooth pursuit, saccades, antisaccades, and memory-guided saccades was evaluated with eye-tracker analysis using a battery of tests.Results: Forty-two subjects with early-stage idiopathic PD and 50 healthy controls participated in the study. There were no statistically significant differences in age, gender, years of education, or cognition between the groups. Early-stage PD patients showed impairment in velocity, phase, and range of motion of smooth pursuit eye movements, as well as impaired precision and recollection performing visually guided memory saccades. Consequently, there is also a reading dysfunction, with slower reading speed and longer eye fixations. No significant differences were found regarding reflexive saccades and antisaccades between these two groups.Conclusion: Results suggest that impaired smooth pursuit movements, memory-guided saccades and reading functions are present in early-stage PD, even without other expressed motor symptoms. These findings could potentially contribute to the development of new and non-invasive diagnostic biomarkers in PD. biomarkers early-stage eye movements Parkinson's disease smooth pursuit biomarkerji očesni gibi Parkinsonova bolezen true false true Angleški jezik Slovenski jezik Neznano 2026-01-27 08:31:21 2026-01-27 08:31:22 2026-01-28 04:15:02 0000-00-00 00:00:00 2026 0 0 Nasl. z nasl. zaslona; Opis vira z dne 27. 1. 2026; str. 1-10 Vol. 16 [article no.] ǂ1702050 2026 0000-00-00 Zaloznikova Objavljeno NiDoloceno 0000-00-00 0000-00-00 0000-00-00 616.8 1664-2295 10.3389/fneur.2025.1702050 266202883 RAZ_Popovic_Zvonimir_2026.pdf RAZ_Popovic_Zvonimir_2026.pdf 1 E05121BCAF46314018A116948D20B1A4 51ff76cfa1f3664d8b54aa0cf13024baa47d0f84cd1f053e5d2db4f105f491f0 616bc206-fb52-11f0-a15d-001a4af901a5 https://dirros.openscience.si/Dokument.php?lang=slv&id=38952 https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neurology/articles/10.3389/fneur.2025.1702050/full 0 6c3f5550-fb52-11f0-a15d-001a4af901a5 https://dirros.openscience.si/Dokument.php?lang=slv&id=38953 Univerzitetni klinični center Ljubljana 0 0 0