A CLINICAL APPROACH TO THE MEASUREMENT OF CEREBRAL DYSFUNCTION

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Abstract
Cerebral dysfunction is seldom measured by objective means. Previous attempts to do so have mainly been concerned with abnormalities of motor behavior, though some attempts at measurement of attentional factors have been made. Because oculomotor hyperkinesis might involve both these facets of cerebral dysfunction, electro-oculography was used in the present study to record eye movements in different groups of subjects. Twenty-five children aged 6 to 12 years with no known neurological disease, 25 children aged 5 to 11 years with minimal cerebral dysfunction, and 16 children aged 5 to 14 years with more gross forms of neurological disease were tested. The ability of these children to fix a target visually over a period of 120 seconds (when a visual distraction was provided) was found to distinguish normal children from those with cerebral dysfunction when the total duration of fixation on the target was used as a measurement. The duration of the first fixation was statistically significantly longer and the number of discrete fixations was significantly fewer in the normal children, but the range of measurements was too great for these variables to be of use in an individual case. Among normal children, ability to attend to the task was found to improve with increasing age, and girls were found to be better performers than boys of the same age. The method is potentially useful not only as a diagnostic aid but also in the assessment of progress, whether the children are treated or not.
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