Contribution of Eye Movements in Assessment of Deficits and Neurorehabilitation after a Stroke

Dear Colleagues,

Seventeen million people all over the world suffer from strokes every year. Recent epidemiological studies reveal that more than 74% of stroke survivors experience deficits of vision, visual field reduction and eye movement problems that are not addressed. Indeed, 40% of patients do not even have the words to express the problems; it is only young and assertive patients that articulate their visual problems.

Vision relies on eye movements. Eye movements are fast, and their abnormalities cannot be assessed via bedside naked eye examination. Eye movements are important for vision, space perception, cognition, attention, body equilibrium, posture and control of any motor activity. Stroke can affect different neural circuits involved in programming and generating eye movements. Consequently, it is important to perform thorough examination of all types of eye movements—saccades, vergence, fixations, vestibulo-ocular eye movements, etc.—to assess such problems, including eye movements during reading or visual search tasks. Importantly, all types of eye movements are gifted with neuroplasticity and can be improved via specific training or even completely restored.

At this stage, eye movement neuro training in stroke patients is almost nonexistent. The purpose of this Special Issue is to bring together existing studies on eye movement functional exploration and rehabilitation in stroke patients. It aims to highlight the benefits of such approaches but also address the urgency to develop further everyday clinic eye movement neuro training in such patients and even prioritize treating eye movements first, as it will further enhance all other therapeutic approaches applied.

Indeed, rehabilitation in stroke patients includes a variety of techniques:

physical therapy (PT), occupational therapy (OT), speech–language therapy (SLT), constraint-induced movement therapy (CIMT), robot-assisted therapy, mirror Therapy, virtual reality (VR), rehabilitation, electrical stimulation (ES), cognitive rehabilitation, aquatic therapy, neurodevelopmental treatment (NDT), music therapy, task-specific training, community-based rehabilitation, etc.

However, eye movement neuro training is missing among these techniques. The goal is to bridge this gap and open new opportunities for clinical science and patient treatment.

Dr. Zoi Kapoula
Prof. Dr. Frederick Robert Carrick
Guest Editors

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• eye movements (saccades, vergence, vestibular, optokinetic)
• visual deficits (hemineglect, hemianopsia, scotoma)
• eye movement training
• attention
• equilibrium
• spasticity
• quality of life
• cognitive executive functions
• AI machine
• deep learning