Влияние мозжечковой дисфункции, приобретенной в результате лечения опухоли, на функционирование саккадической системы у детей

Abstract

Cerebellum plays a crucial role in control of saccadic eye movements and gaze fixation. The cerebellar impairment leads to various disorders of oculomotor behavior and related psychophysiological processes, which, in turn, may affect the efficiency of rehabilitation process of patients who underwent tumor resection surgery on cerebellum. The purpose of this work was to determine the ways and the extent of influence of surgery-related cerebellar dysfunction on visuomotor system of children. We also intended to develop criteria based on these findings to assess the patient’s rehabilitation progress quantitatively as well as qualitatively. 66 children between 9 and 17 years old with surgery-related cerebellar dysfunction were enrolled in this study. The control group consisted of 54 healthy children of the same age. The subjects were to perform 3 oculomotor tasks while their eye movements were recorded using eye tracking technique. We found that children with cerebellar dysfunction had impaired gaze fixation ability, executed more hypermetric saccades and experienced difficulties with visual scanning. These oculomotor system deficiencies inevitably lead to disturbances of various cognitive processes such as visual perception, attention focusing, memory and reading. Also, hypermetric saccades can be treated as a special case of ataxia usually found in patients with cerebellar dysfunction. We conclude that assessment of oculomotor deficiencies should be used to increase the effectiveness of rehabilitation procedures for patients with cerebellar dysfunction.