e(ye)BRAIN GMBH

Article preview from Start-Up - January, 2011

Could the eyes hold the key to diagnosing neurologic conditions by associating eye movement behavior to specific areas of the brain? French start-up e(ye)BRAIN certainly thinks so, and as a result has developed a brain tracking medical device that its inventor claims is able to diagnose Parkinson's disease and multiple sclerosis.

e(ye)BRAIN GMBH

By Bob Kronemyer

It has often been said that the eyes are the windows of the soul. Could the eyes also hold the key to diagnosing neurologic conditions by associating eye movement behavior to specific areas of the brain? The French start-up e(ye)BRAIN believes they do. It has developed a brain-tracking medical device whose inventor claims is able to diagnose Parkinson's disease and multiple sclerosis.

"For decades, it has been known that certain pathologies manifest themselves by abnormal eye movements. But up until now, those eye movements have not been truly quantified," says company founder and CEO Serge Kinkingnéhun. "We have developed several new algorithms that accurately track eye movement." The brain uses many different areas to produce eye movements. If a brain area does not function well, the eye movement that it controls will have an abnormal behavior. "Abnormal eye movement reflects the brain area dysfunction," he says.

To use the start-up's Eye Brain Tracker, a patient will stare at a computer screen that, for example, displays a fixation cross in the middle of the screen. Targets then appear on the right or on the left of the cross. The patient's reaction time to the appearing target and his accuracy to fixate on the target is recorded through the eye tracker. "A delayed reaction time and/or an inability to fixate targets are likely caused by a neurologic condition," says Kinkingnéhun. A patient's failure to normally move his eyes from the fixation cross to a target is associated with part of the brain's stem not functioning well, he says, and therefore may suggest Parkinsonism. Likewise, multiple sclerosis is linked to eye movement in which each individual eye has a different velocity while moving toward a target, originating at the brain's white matter.

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