Objective oculomotor evidence in TBI litigation

Most traumatic brain injury claims still turn on subjective reports: headache, fog, photophobia, “I don’t feel like myself.” Those symptoms are real for many plaintiffs and fabricated for some. The courtroom has historically had no clean way to tell the difference.

Oculomotor testing records how the eyes move — saccades, pursuit, fixation, vergence — with millisecond timing. Those movements are wired through brainstem and cortical circuits that are disrupted by concussion and more severe TBI. The recording is quantitative. It can be repeated. It cannot be rehearsed into a normal pattern by a coached witness.

What the record actually contains

A typical session captures the subject’s eye-movement patterns on a standardized battery. The output is not a radiologist’s impression. It is a set of metrics compared against norms built from thousands of subjects studied at Veterans Affairs hospitals, including Veterans with concussion, mild TBI, moderate TBI, and severe TBI.

Counsel can then ask a precise question: does this recording support a history of TBI, refute it, or sit in a range that requires clinical correlation? That is a different conversation from “the plaintiff says they have a headache.”

Why attorneys use it on both sides

Plaintiff counsel uses the method when imaging is unremarkable — the common mild-TBI fact pattern — and the defense is arguing there is “nothing objective.” Defense counsel uses the same method when the claimed disability is out of proportion to the mechanism, or when malingering is in play. The test is not a plaintiff tool or a defense tool. It is a measurement.

Dr. Gitchel’s opinions are limited to what the data support. Cases settle when both sides can finally see the same recording.