Kimura N, et al. - By using a new research method utilizing an intelligent vision sensor camera prototype with a 1 kHz sampling rate, the authors examined the kinematic features of spontaneous blinking in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients and healthy controls. The blink amplitude was decreased during spontaneous blinking. In patients with PD, the pause between the closing and opening phase was prolonged. Furthermore, small blink waves prior to blink onset were characteristically found in the PD patients.

• The authors enrolled 65 PD patients and 62 healthy controls.
• They measured spontaneous blinks by using a non-stress ‘intelligent vision sensor’ camera prototype.

• In the PD patients, the mean spontaneous blink rate was 17.9 (blinks/min) and 15.6 in the controls (no correlation).
• However, among the PD patients, there were extremely low and extremely high blink-rate groups.
• In the PD patients, the amplitude of the closing and opening phase were significantly smaller than those in the controls.
• In 60% of the PD patients, small blink waves (100-200 msec) prior to blink onset existed and in 18% of the controls.