New Technology Advances for Recovery from Brain Injury

Researchers from NYU Langone Medical Center have developed new technology that can assess the location and impact of a brain injury by tracking the eye movements of patients as they watch music videos for less than four minutes, according to a student recently published in the Journal of Neurosurgery. The study suggests that the use of eye-tracking technology may be a potential biological marker for assessing brain function and monitoring recovery for patients with brain injuries. Using a technology developed at NYU Langone, the researchers had the participants of the study watch a music video or television content for 220 seconds while they measured the ratio of horizontal to vertical eye movements. They discovered that in the neurologically healthy subjects, the ratios were close to one-to-one, with horizontal movements equaling vertical movements. But the 12 participants with nerve damage or swelling in the brain pressing on nerves all showed abnormal eye movement ratios correlating to the nerve that was affected. In every case where the abnormal eye movement was due to swelling in the brain, surgery to fix the brain problem also restored the eye movements to normal range. While the paper describes patients with brain problems that are apparent on imaging, researchers say the technology will likely be most useful for the assessment of concussion and blast injury — which can be difficult to detect with standard imaging studies. To read more about this study, click here.