Navigating Visual Challenges: How Parkinson's Disease Alters Cognitive Priorities in Visual Search

ObjectiveParkinson's disease (PD) hampers visual search tasks such as reading, driving, and navigation. We examined expectations from past experiences, guiding cognition and contextual priors, on visual search in PD.MethodsWe compared eye movements as PD and healthy participants searched for a hidden object (target) in cluttered real-world scenes.ResultsPD participants prolonged fixation on high-probability (high-prior) locations for the target, consistent across expected and unexpected scenario. Such emphasis on contextual visual priors, evidenced by high fixation duration on high-probability areas, was beneficial when the target was at the expected location but presented challenges when the target was situated in an unlikely place.ConclusionThis study contributes to understanding how PD impacts visual search behavior and cognitive processing. The findings indicate that PD alters attention allocation and visual processing by affecting the utilization of contextual visual priors. It provides insights for potential interventions targeting visuo-cognitive deficits in PD patients. Published 2024. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.