Saccadic eye movements in body dysmorphic disorder

Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is characterised by a preoccupation with perceived flaws in appearance, which significantly disrupts functioning and causes distress. The difference in self-perception characteristic of BDD has been related to a bias in visual processing across a variety of stimuli and tasks. However, it is unknown how BDD participants perform on basic saccade tasks using eye tracking. Eighteen BDD and 21 healthy control participants completed a battery of saccadic eye movement tasks (fixation, prosaccade, anti-saccade, and memory guided). No significant differences were noted between the groups regarding behavioural performance or patterns of eye movements; however, there was a trend for BDD participants to make increased anticipatory errors on the prosaccade task. Overall, BDD participants demonstrated largely intact saccadic eye movement characteristics which may differentiate BDD from other obsessive-compulsive related disorders, although future research using larger samples is required. It is consequently argued that abnormalities in visual processing apparent among people with BDD may reflect abnormalities in higher-order visual systems.