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Eye movement indices as predictors of conversion to psychosis in individuals at clinical high risk

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Abstract

Eye movement abnormalities have been established as an “endophenotype” of schizophrenia. However, less is known about the possibility of these abnormalities as biomarkers for psychosis conversion among clinical high risk (CHR) populations. In the present study, 108 CHR individuals and 70 healthy controls (HC) underwent clinical assessments and eye-tracking tests, comprising fixation stability and free-viewing tasks. According to three-year follow-up outcomes, CHR participants were further stratified into CHR-converter (CHR-C; n = 21) and CHR-nonconverter (CHR-NC; n = 87) subgroups. Prediction models were constructed using Cox regression and logistic regression. The CHR-C group showed more saccades of the fixation stability test (no distractor) and a reduced saccade amplitude of the free-viewing test than HC. Moreover, the CHR-NC group exhibited excessive saccades and an increased saccade amplitude of the fixation stability test (no distractor; with distractor) compared with HC. Furthermore, two indices could effectively discriminate CHR-C from CHR-NC with an area under the receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curve of 0.80, including the saccade number of the fixation stability test (no distractor) and the saccade amplitude of the free-viewing test. Combined with negative symptom scores of the Scale of Prodromal Symptoms, the area was 0.81. These findings support that eye movement alterations might emerge before the onset of clinically overt psychosis and could assist in predicting psychosis transition among CHR populations.

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Funding

This study was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, National Key R&D Program of China (2016YFC1306800); National Natural Science Foundation of China (81671332, 81971251, 81671329, 81871050, and 62171269); Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Major Project (2018SHZDZX01); Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality (16JC1420200, 16ZR1430500, 19410710800, 19411969100, 19441907800, 20ZR1448600, and 21S31903100); Shanghai Municipal Health Commission (202040361); Clinical Research Center at Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine (DLY201817); Shanghai Jiao Tong University Foundation (ZH2018ZDB03, ZH2018QNB19), The Clinical Research Center at Shanghai Mental Health Center (CRC2018ZD01, CRC2018ZD04, CRC2018YB01, and CRC2019ZD02), Shanghai Mental Health Center (2019-zd01); “To the youth” Psychological class for middle school students (21DZ2300400).

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JW, TZ, HL, TC, and ZL: designed the research project; XT and YH: were responsible for recruiting participants; GW, ZQ, and YT: conceived and supervised the clinical evaluation; DZ and XL: carried out the data collection; DZ, LX, and YX: contributed to the statistical analyses and conceptualization of the manuscript. All authors were responsible for reviewing and approving the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Tianhong Zhang or Jijun Wang.

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Zhang, D., Xu, L., Xie, Y. et al. Eye movement indices as predictors of conversion to psychosis in individuals at clinical high risk. Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci 273, 553–563 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00406-022-01463-z

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