Evaluation of recognition memory through oculomotorius behavior in Alzheimer disease.

INTRODUCTION: The study of ocular movements in patients with Alzheimer disease is an useful tool to evaluate recognition memory. METHODS: assessment of this specific type of explicit memory in 15 individuals diagnosed with Alzheimer disease and 15 controls. The parameters of ocular fixation were examined using the Eye-Tracking Tobii Tx300 through Pair-wised ranking with the paradigm novel object recognition. RESULTS: People with Alzheimer disease present difficulties in the recognition of previously presented stimulus when the latency of presentation of the familiarization and the test period is longer than two minutes. DISCUSSION: The analysis of oculomotorius behavior can simplify the evaluation of recognition memory without appealing to verbal report and the visual paired comparison task. This contributes to the comprehension of the relationship among spatial attention, working memory and episodic memory.