The authors wish to acknowledge their collaborators on studies that employ eye movement monitoring of memory, with particular thanks to Eyal Reingold, Jiye Shen, Neal J. Cohen, Robert R. Althoff, Deborah Hannula, and Dave Warren.  This work has been supported by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Canada Research Chairs Program and the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI).

Equipment used during data acquisition
Eye tracker
The eye tracker used in the current protocol is an EyeLink II system (SR Research Ltd; Mississauga, Ontario, Canada). This head-mounted, video-based eye tracker records eye position in X, Y-coordinate frame at a sampling rate of either 500 or 250 Hz, with a spatial resolution of &lt; 0.1&deg;. One camera is used to monitor head position by sending infrared markers to sensors placed on the four corners of the display mo...

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No conflicts of interest declared.

Eye movement monitoring is an efficient, useful tool with which to assess memory function in a variety of populations. This protocol describes the use of a head-mounted video-based eye tracker, but the protocol can be easily adapted to the use of remote eye tracking devices, as remote eye trackers remove the need for helmet adjustment and simplify the camera adjustments. However, with a remote eye tracker, head movement must be constrained to maintain accuracy of eye recordings. Accurate calibration of the eye movemen...

A correction was made to <a href="http://www.jove.com/index/details.stp?id=2108">Eye Movement Monitoring of Memory</a>. There was an error in the author, Douglas A. McQuiggan's, name. The author's name has been corrected to:
Douglas A. McQuiggan
instead of:
Doug McQuiggan

A correction to an author's name has been made for the article Eye Movement Monitoring of Memory.

Erratum: Eye Movement Monitoring of Memory

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<td>Eye Tracker</td>
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eye movement monitoring of memory

Explicit (often verbal) reports are typically used to investigate memory (e.g. "Tell me what you remember about the person you saw at the bank yesterday."), however such reports can often be unreliable or sensitive to response bias 1, and may be unobtainable in some participant populations. Furthermore, explicit reports only reveal when information has reached consciousness and cannot comment on when memories were accessed during processing, regardless of whether the information is subsequently accessed in a conscious manner. Eye movement monitoring (eye tracking) provides a tool by which memory can be probed without asking participants to comment on the contents of their memories, and access of such memories can be revealed on-line 2,3. Video-based eye trackers (either head-mounted or remote) use a system of cameras and infrared markers to examine the pupil and corneal reflection in each eye as the participant views a display monitor. For head-mounted eye trackers, infrared markers are also used to determine head position to allow for head movement and more precise localization of eye position. Here, we demonstrate the use of a head-mounted eye tracking system to investigate memory performance in neurologically-intact and neurologically-impaired adults. Eye movement monitoring procedures begin with the placement of the eye tracker on the participant, and setup of the head and eye cameras. Calibration and validation procedures are conducted to ensure accuracy of eye position recording. Real-time recordings of X,Y-coordinate positions on the display monitor are then converted and used to describe periods of time in which the eye is static (i.e. fixations) versus in motion (i.e., saccades). Fixations and saccades are time-locked with respect to the onset/offset of a visual display or another external event (e.g. button press). Experimental manipulations are constructed to examine how and when patterns of fixations and saccades are altered through different types of prior experience. The influence of memory is revealed in the extent to which scanning patterns to new images differ from scanning patterns to images that have been previously studied 2, 4-5. Memory can also be interrogated for its specificity; for instance, eye movement patterns that differ between an identical and an altered version of a previously studied image reveal the storage of the altered detail in memory 2-3, 6-8. These indices of memory can be compared across participant populations, thereby providing a powerful tool by which to examine the organization of memory in healthy individuals, and the specific changes that occur to memory with neurological insult or decline 2-3, 8-10.

Watch this Scientific Journal Video about Eye Movement Monitoring of Memory at JoVE.com

Eye Movement Monitoring of Memory

Eye movement monitoring (or eye tracking) reveals where in space the eyes linger, when and for how long. Here, we demonstrate how eye tracking can be used to investigate the integrity of memory in multiple participant populations, without requiring verbal, or otherwise explicit, reports.

Explicit (often verbal) reports are typically used to investigate memory (e.g. "Tell me what you remember about the person you saw at the bank ...

Research

JoVE Journal

Neuroscience

14.5K Views.  Rotman Research Institute. Il monitoraggio dei movimenti degli occhi (o eye tracking) rivela nello spazio in cui gli occhi indugiano, quando e per quanto tempo. Qui, ci dimostrano come eye-tracking può essere utilizzato per indagare l'integrità della memoria nelle popolazioni più partecipanti, senza la necessità di relazioni verbali, o in altro modo esplicito.