Eye test may help diagnose ADHD

Tel Aviv, Israel-A recent study from researchers at Tel Aviv University published in Vision Research found that a test examining involuntary eye movements may help diagnose attention deficit/hyperactive disorder (ADHD) and can predict whether stimulant medication would be an effective treatment for the individual.

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Currently, doctors diagnose patients with ADHD through medical, behavioral, and social history of both the patient and the family because there are no reliable physiological markers to diagnose the disorder.

But researchers in Tel Aviv saw increased microsaccades and blink rates in adults with ADHD. The study found that there is a direct correlation between ADGD and the inability to suppress eye movement in the anticipation of visual stimuli. The research also found improved performance by the participants after taking methylphenidate, which normalized the suppression of the involuntary eye movements to the average level of the control group.

"We had two objectives going into this research," said Dr. Moshe Fried. "The first was to provide a new diagnostic tool for ADHD, and the second was to test whether ADHD medication really works-and we found that it does. There was a significant difference between the two groups, and between the two sets of tests taken by ADHD participants un-medicated and later medicated."