Eye movement characteristics are not significantly influenced by psychiatric comorbidities in people with visual snow syndrome

Visual snow syndrome (VSS) is a neurological disorder primarily affecting the processing of visual information. Using ocular motor (OM) tasks, we previously demonstrated that participants with VSS exhibit altered saccade profiles consistent with visual attention impairments. We subsequently proposed that OM assessments may provide an objective measure of dysfunction in these individuals. However, VSS participants also frequently report significant psychiatric symptoms. Given that that these symptoms have been shown previously to influ-ence performance on OM tasks, the objective of this study was to investigate whether psychiatric symptoms (specifically: depression, anxiety, fatigue, sleep difficulties, and depersonalization) influence the OM metrics found to differ in VSS. Sixty-one VSS participants completed a battery of four OM tasks and a series of online questionnaires assessing psychiatric symptomology. We revealed no significant relationship between psychiatric symptoms and OM metrics on any of the tasks, demonstrating that in participants with VSS, differences in OM behaviour are a feature of the disorder. This supports the utility of OM assessment in characterising deficit in VSS, whether supporting a diagnosis or monitoring future treatment efficacy.

Automated summary

Visual snow syndrome (VSS) is a neurological disorder affecting visual information processing, and participants with VSS show altered saccade profiles in ocular motor tasks. This study investigated the influence of psychiatric symptoms on these differences in ocular motor behavior in VSS participants. The results showed no significant relationship between psychiatric symptoms and ocular motor metrics, suggesting that the differences in ocular motor behavior are a characteristic of the disorder.