Antisaccade performance in Korsakoff patients reveals deficits in oculomotor inhibition

Abstract

Oculomotor inhibition reflects the ability to suppress an unwanted eye movement. The goal of the present study was to assess oculomotor inhibition in patients with Korsakoff's syndrome (KS). To this end, an antisaccade task was employed in which an eye movement towards an onset stimulus has to be inhibited, and a voluntary saccade has to be executed in the opposite direction. Compared to the results of a matched control group, patients showed a higher percentage of intrusive saccades, made more antisaccade errors, and showed longer latencies on prosaccade trials. These results clearly show that oculomotor inhibition is impaired in KS. Part of these deficits in oculomotor inhibition may be explained by neuronal atrophy in the frontal areas, which is generally associated with KS.

Keywords:

• Korsakoff syndrome
• Oculomotor inhibition
• Antisaccade task

Acknowledgments

This research was funded by two grants from NWO (Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research): Grant 451-09-019 to S.v.d.S. and Grant 451-10-013 to T.C.W.N. We thank Erik Oudman for advice.