Daffner K R, Scinto L F, Weintraub S, Guinessey J E, Mesulam M M
Bullard and Denny-Brown Laboratories, Boston, MA.
Neurology. 1992 Feb;42(2):320-8. doi: 10.1212/wnl.42.2.320.
Clinical accounts of Alzheimer's disease (AD) suggest that some patients exhibit markedly diminished curiosity and initiative early in the course of their illness. Such behavioral changes are extremely difficult to measure experimentally. We studied one aspect of curiosity by measuring exploratory eye movements in response to provocative visual stimuli in 12 patients with probable AD and 10 matched controls. Subjects viewed slides, each of which contained an incongruous or irregular figure paired with a congruous or regular one. Unlike controls, who spent significantly more time viewing the incongruous stimuli, AD patients distributed their viewing time equally and spent significantly less time than controls looking at the novel stimuli. Additionally, when presented with picture slides containing an unexpected element, AD patients exhibited diminished visual exploration overall and decreased attention to the incongruous part. Further analyses suggest that the results cannot be adequately explained by a general decline in cognition or by problems with ocular motility or directing visual attention. We conclude that AD patients exhibit diminished curiosity which can be measured by the study of exploratory eye movements.
阿尔茨海默病（AD）的临床报告表明，一些患者在疾病早期就表现出明显的好奇心和主动性下降。这种行为变化极难通过实验进行测量。我们通过测量12名可能患有AD的患者和10名匹配对照对刺激性视觉刺激的探索性眼动，研究了好奇心的一个方面。受试者观看幻灯片，每张幻灯片都包含一个不协调或不规则的图形与一个协调或规则的图形配对。与对照组不同，对照组花费显著更多时间观看不协调刺激，AD患者将他们的观看时间平均分配，并且花费比对照组显著更少的时间观看新异刺激。此外，当呈现包含意外元素的图片幻灯片时，AD患者总体上表现出视觉探索减少，并且对不协调部分的注意力下降。进一步分析表明，这些结果不能通过认知的普遍下降、眼球运动问题或视觉注意力引导来充分解释。我们得出结论，AD患者表现出好奇心下降，这可以通过对探索性眼动的研究来测量。
