Impairments in the antisaccade task and unstable ocular fixation can be observed in neurological patients with lesions of the prefrontal cortex. Prefrontal cortical functions are widely assumed to be among the first functions deteriorating with ageing. The present study aimed at examining saccadic eye movement and neuropsychological test performance in elderly participants carefully screened for the absence of ophthalmologic, neurologic, geriatric, and psychiatric disorders.

Forty elderly (mean age 72.3 y, range 59 - 87; 20 males) and 20 young (mean age 26.0 y, range 20 - 29; 10 males) subjects participated in this study. Horizontal pro- and antisaccades, elicited under the 200 ms gap and overlap conditions, were measured in 4 blocks of 200 trials each (100 stimuli to either side in random order; ordering of blocks permutated across participants). Furthermore, neuropsychological performance was assessed with the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test and computerised tests of working memory, stimulus-response incompatibility, alertness, and response inhibition. Eye movements were elicited and measured monocularly with the ExpressEye infrared system (OPTOM, Freiburg).

Old as compared to young participants exhibited a widespread decline in ocular motor functioning, including delayed pro- and antisaccadic reaction times, and great amounts of anticipatory responses and reflexive prosaccades during the antitask. The senior participants also exhibited worse performance in most of the neuropsychological tests when compared to young adults. The results of our study argue in favour of the assumption of a general decline in oculomotor and neuropsychological functioning during healthy ageing.

Research was supported by the University of Freiburg and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG; Kl 985/6-1)