Eye movements as a biomarker for anxiety

Researchers from Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Xiamen Xianyue Hospital and Children’s Hospital of Fudan University have explored the relationship between anxiety and eye movement patterns.

Writing in The British Journal of Psychiatry, the scientists highlighted that while anxiety disorders are highly prevalent, there is a lack of objective biomarkers.

“Whereas threat-related attentional biases are well documented, less is known about broader eye movement alterations that may characterise anxiety,” they shared.

In order to investigate eye movement biomarkers of anxiety, the researchers recruited 91 patients with anxiety disorders, 118 with depressive disorders and 98 healthy controls.

They recorded the eye movements of study participants while viewing neutral stimuli, and while completing tasks that involve smooth pursuit and fixation stability.

“Compared with both patients with depression and healthy controls, patients with anxiety disorders exhibited hyper-scanning during free viewing, characterised by increased saccade frequency and path length,” the scientists shared.

Patients with anxiety also exhibited characteristics of hyper-pursuit during the tasks requiring smooth pursuit – reflected in increased velocity gain, fewer intrusive saccades and more catch-up saccades.

“Hyper-scanning and hyper-pursuit emerge as defining eye movement signatures of anxiety, linking core mechanisms of vigilance and prediction with measurable behavioural markers,” the researchers observed.

“These insights position eye-tracking as a promising behavioural modality for mechanism-informed differentiation across affective disorders,” they concluded.