Eye movement deficits in ME/CFS and sleep deprivation

Marco

Marco

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Not from the same study unfortunately but these recent findings of visual deficits due to sleep deprivation :

By using state-of-the-art eye movement research techniques, they were able to generate reliable effects showing trends of increasing impairment throughout the night for components of motion perception, such as smooth, continuous tracking eye movements (called pursuit), and effects on the small, episodic, jumping corrective eye movements (called saccades).

The researchers found that when participants were asked to track stimuli with unpredictable onset, direction, speed and starting location, human eye movements were dramatically impaired.
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https://www.physoc.org/news_article...rived-eye-movement-test-indicates-sleep-loss/

strike me as similar, on first reading, to those found in ME/CFS (particularly with regards to tracking/smooth pursuit):

Patients and controls exhibited similar error rates and saccade latencies (response times) on prosaccade and antisaccade tasks. Patients showed relatively intact ability to accurately fixate the target (prosaccades), but were impaired when required to focus accurately in a specific position opposite the target (antisaccades). Patients were most markedly impaired when required to direct their gaze as closely as possible to a smoothly moving target (smooth pursuit).
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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23918092
 
Weirdly, I have a chiropractor who does these tests. He has a computer program to test this.

After doing the test I had eye-muscle pain & exhaustion for two days, I never have anything like that at all, but I could only lie in bed with my eyes closed for two days.

My chiropractor usually does this test with people wit brain injury. He uses the program to slowly train people. He says my score is pretty much the same as a person with concussion, the difference is I can not do any of the training exercises without a big reaction for days, he’s never had that happening before.

Pretty much the same thing happening with all my other muscles..
 
unicorn7 said:
My chiropractor usually does this test with people wit brain injury. He uses the program to slowly train people. He says my score is pretty much the same as a person with concussion, the difference is I can not do any of the training exercises without a big reaction for days, he’s never had that happening before.
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Two points. I noticed references to these tests being used in respect to brain injury and I have a particular interest in post-concussion syndrome. Secondly I wonder is there a way of disagregating deficits due to ocular muscle fatigue from neural deficits?
 
I hope more research goes on eyesight. Mine's funky but all tests are clear (aside for myopia and a crapton of floaters anyway) so it looks more like it's either in image processing or maybe eye muscles. But I get a lot of weird noise, like some shimmering snow effect, as well so I doubt it's the eye only and probably mostly neural.

Focus is definitely abnormal. It's like it's readjusting itself constantly and I get weird moving smears from any source of solid light, like LEDs or stars at night.

Putting a quick example for reference in case anyone has that. The smears move, are sometimes on both eyes, sometimes only one, sometimes none. Not a well-executed rendition but the point is that lines kind of shoot out of those light sources, kinda like deforming them like the smudge tool in a graphics program.

my-vision-smudges.png
 
Marco said:
Two points. I noticed references to these tests being used in respect to brain injury and I have a particular interest in post-concussion syndrome. Secondly I wonder is there a way of disagregating deficits due to ocular muscle fatigue from neural deficits?
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The overlap in symptoms with TBI is pretty high. The connection is probably tenuous but the outcome is eerily similar.
 
rvallee said:
I hope more research goes on eyesight. Mine's funky but all tests are clear (aside for myopia and a crapton of floaters anyway) so it looks more like it's either in image processing or maybe eye muscles. But I get a lot of weird noise, like some shimmering snow effect, as well so I doubt it's the eye only and probably mostly neural.

Focus is definitely abnormal. It's like it's readjusting itself constantly and I get weird moving smears from any source of solid light, like LEDs or stars at night.

Putting a quick example for reference in case anyone has that. The smears move, are sometimes on both eyes, sometimes only one, sometimes none. Not a well-executed rendition but the point is that lines kind of shoot out of those light sources, kinda like deforming them like the smudge tool in a graphics program.

View attachment 7992
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Interestingly blurred peripheral vision and blurry lateral tracking is a side effect of many anti depressants.
 
rvallee said:
I hope more research goes on eyesight. Mine's funky but all tests are clear (aside for myopia and a crapton of floaters anyway) so it looks more like it's either in image processing or maybe eye muscles. But I get a lot of weird noise, like some shimmering snow effect, as well so I doubt it's the eye only and probably mostly neural.

Focus is definitely abnormal. It's like it's readjusting itself constantly and I get weird moving smears from any source of solid light, like LEDs or stars at night.

Putting a quick example for reference in case anyone has that. The smears move, are sometimes on both eyes, sometimes only one, sometimes none. Not a well-executed rendition but the point is that lines kind of shoot out of those light sources, kinda like deforming them like the smudge tool in a graphics program.

View attachment 7992
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That looks to me very much like the 'coma' you get in astronomical telescopes due to spherical aberrations off axis (easy for me to say :)) :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coma_(optics)

Perhaps some distortion in the curvature of the cornea?

PS - I also get the snow effect - when looking at a blue sky it reminds me of an old television set not tuned in properly.
 
Thanks @MeSci for the links which led me to this study (the same researcher from the above ME/CFS study) that I don't think I've come across and is exactly the sort of thing I had in mind in mentioning psychologists (who ted to get a bad rap here but it's a very diverse field).

Restricted Spatial Windows of Visibility in Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME)

What they measured (my para breaks) :

In spite of reported problems related to the perception of even elementary spatial information,
the effects of ME on spatial vision remain relatively unexplored and unquantified.

The purpose of the present study was therefore to explore how ME affects spatial windows of visibility
using the spatial contrast sensitivity function.

The human contrast sensitivity function provides a measure of the range of spatial detail that is visible
(resolvable) to the visual system and the relative sensitivity to stimulus contrast within this range.

Changes in contrast sensitivity are well documented in ageing [17] and are evident in a range of retinal diseases [18].

They are also present in neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s disease [19] and in inflammatory
autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis [20–22].

Contrast sensitivity deficits can be present even when there is no detectable impairment in visual
acuity. They provide a sensitive clinical measure of visual function and can indicate abnormal visual
processing at the level of the retina and in the cortical and subcortical visual pathways.
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What they found :

Compared to controls, the ME group exhibited a restricted spatial window of visibility for
encoding stimulus contrast. This was characterised principally by a contrast sensitivity
deficit at lower spatial frequencies and a narrower bandwidth.

Our findings suggest that contrast sensitivity deficits may represent a visual marker of ME, and be
indicative of abnormal visual processing at the level of the retina and in the cortical and subcortical
visual pathways.
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https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/58...20.380302444.1565425979-2114889610.1565425979

This suggests to me that visual acuity (the ability to resolve fine detail) remains relatively intact in ME/CFS patients but that there is a measurable deficit in the ability to detect larger scale (lower frequency) patterns due to reduced sensitivity to contrast.

Here's an explanation as relates to visual development in infants (note the test at the end is for comprehension -not an eye test) :

https://psyc.ucalgary.ca/PACE/VA-Lab/Marcela/Pages/page35a.html

 
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Marco said:
Thanks @MeSci for the links which led me to this study (the same researcher from the above ME/CFS study) that I don't think I've come across and is exactly the sort of thing I had in mind in mentioning psychologists (who ted to get a bad rap here but it's a very diverse field).

Restricted Spatial Windows of Visibility in Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME)
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Just checked, and this is discussed here: https://www.s4me.info/threads/restricted-spatial-windows-of-visibility-in-me.2006/
 
Marco said:
That looks to me very much like the 'coma' you get in astronomical telescopes due to spherical aberrations off axis (easy for me to say :)) :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coma_(optics)

Perhaps some distortion in the curvature of the cornea?

PS - I also get the snow effect - when looking at a blue sky it reminds me of an old television set not tuned in properly.
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Interesting. But I doubt it's related to anything in the eye itself since it comes and goes and moves dynamically, as in looking at a LED the effect isn't fixed, the streaking moves and warps and I sometimes get pronounced double-vision for anything luminous (as in anything that doesn't produce light looks normal) but it just comes and goes as well.

I also sometimes get very blurry vision, especially when very tired, that seems to be caused by tears, blinking a few times mostly clears it up. As if my tears were more viscous than usual.

But standard eye tests are all good. I simply don't have the energy to go through the process of a thorough investigation so I just hope nothing gets too bad. It's been years already anyway so it seems stable, just annoying.
 
Rvallee, the tear film is part of the focusing system for the eye and is incredibly complex. ME is known to interfere with the tear film so that could be causing some of your problems. Dry eye can actually cause eyes to become very wet because too much of the wrong type of tear is made. If you do try eye drops get ones without preservatives and not the ones which are for making you eyeballs look whiter.

There are also lots of muscles round the eye that can move and make things blurry too.

In fact, the eye is so complicated and finely tuned that it would be surprising if it vision was not badly affected in ME. A lot of the time I feel I am not blind but I just can't see.
 
My eyes are pretty good and the issues I have can be attributed to being mid 50s as eyesight deteriorates with age I have slight problems with close vision and slight problem with distance vision. I also have dry eyes which is a recently identified issue (by me) confirmed by optician again I understand this is common as we age.

As far as ME goes I find my eyesight is definitely worse when I have PEM. Not that I can’t see but (even with glasses on) more blurry. Most problematic is ability to read and absorb text. My ability is substantially affected by the length and layout of the text I’m trying to read. Obviously I realise this is probably more at the brain than the eye end of the transaction. But the blurriness is part of it I feel.

Most posts here are ok if there are spaced paragraphs. Documents that use double or triple column are problematic. I rarely read books. Short stories occasionally.
 
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