Explaining Schizophrenia & How Eyes Detect It

Every eye doctor in Miami that takes their job seriously does everything they can to keep up with the latest discoveries in their particular medical field. Doctors already know that there’s a lot of information that can be gathered about a particular patient based on examining their eyes. The way a pupil responds to light is one good example of how the eyes can tell a doctor important information about a person from their eyes. However, there are also other things that doctors can tell based on a patient’s eyes, such as information about psychological disorders. A link between eye movement and schizophrenia has recently been discovered. An eye doctor in Miami Beach could be performing standard tests for schizophrenia based on these movements and recent discoveries.

Eye Movements and What They Mean

The way a person moves their eyes can provide a Miami eye doctor with lots of information. Normal people move their eyes in a certain way when performing specific tasks, but those with certain disorders do not move their eyes exactly the same.

• Fixation tests can help a doctor determine if a person is suffering from schizophrenia. Fixation is where a person is told to focus on a single object that is not in motion.
• Smooth pursuit is the term for a visual tracking method that normal people exhibit when watching an object in motion. Those with schizophrenia will display certain abnormalities while trying to track an object in motion, though.
• Someone with schizophrenia that’s watching a moving object may exhibit something called a ‘saccade’, which is where their eyes slow down and then catch back up to the object in motion.
• A free-viewing test can also help doctors diagnose schizophrenia–this test is where a simple picture is shown and the doctor tracks how a person scans the image.

What Does This Information Mean For You?

After hearing about how doctors detect schizophrenia using eye movement tests, you may be wondering what this means for the average person. It will likely not affect anybody negatively, though. Your Miami Beach eye doctor may want to perform eye movement tests on you and your family members to ensure that any signs of schizophrenia are caught early enough, but that will likely be the only difference these tests will mean for the average person. People with a family history of schizophrenia may want to take advantage of this type of testing so they can catch their disorder before it negatively affects their life, though, which is a positive aspect of it.

photo credit: Lieven SOETE Diversité & Créativité ¬ 20161118.0117 via photopin (license)