Abstract
Despite growing knowledge of the pathologies of mental illnesses, disease-specific biomarkers or behavioral indicators with sufficient sensitivities for the differential diagnosis have not been established. The eye movements are sensorimotor functions that reflect information processing carried out in the brain, and abnormalities in eye movements are often observed in patients with mental illnesses. The patients with schizophrenia show difficulties in executing of the anti-saccade task, abnormalities in ocular tracking of moving target, abnormal exploratory eye movements when they freely viewed pictures or figures. These eye movement abnormalities are thought to be effective in distinguishing individuals with schizophrenia from healthy controls. We have worked on development of an integrated eye movement score that objectively represents normal to abnormal eye movements that can be used to help the diagnosis of schizophrenia. The present issue reviews the eye movement abnormalities in schizophrenia, the uses of them in diagnosis and our attempts in development of an integrated eye movement rating scale that indicates the degree of eye movement abnormality involving our future prospects.
