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    • Aug 19, 2023
    • 3 min read

Akinetopsia

Written by Kerem Muldur

Movement is significant and indispensable in our lives; thus, we cannot live without it. We move and observe the other movements. But some people, cannot perceive or perceive late movements such as walking person’s, running children’s, or flying birds’s movements. This perceptual disorder is called akinetopsia. We will dive into the definition, neurological origin, and some solutions.


Akinetopsia is an acquired defect of visual motion perception. Generally, patients can see any motion but are impaired in more complex motion judgments. Perception of the speed of one object relative to another, or determining the overall direction of motion in noisy displays can be given as two examples. This defect can affect a number of related functions, such as the ability to track or make accurate eye movements to moving objects or to identify object structure from motion cues alone so that a moving object such as a car will appear to “jump” from one stationary position to another (1). 




Akinetopsia is derived from Greek: “A” stands for “not”, “kine” stands for “move”, and “opsin” stands for “see”. Akinetopsia refers to motion blindness, which is a higher visual processing disorder from an extra-striate lesion, in which a patient has difficulty specifically perceiving objects in motion with variable severity and rarely complete (2). This is a rare condition, with only a few reported cases in the literature. There are thought to be two types of akinetopsia; "Frozen frames" also known as cinematographic vision, and "vanishing objects". 


Moreover, the Zeitraffer phenomenon is another overlapping condition that shares similarities with akinetopsia. Zeitraffer phenomenon describes an altered perception of the speed of moving objects, and the patient may describe an illusory experience of slowed motion. This is thought to be related to dysfunction of brain networks responsible for visual perception of speed (3). Akinetopsia can occur in conjunction with other higher visual order manifestations, or it can occur in isolation. These patients often can no longer rely on their vision and train their hearing to help estimate distance and interact with other people. 


Several causes have been described to cause akinetopsia. These include infarction, traumatic brain injury, strokes, acquired brain lesions, neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's ( visual variant of Alzheimer's disease/ posterior cortical atrophy), epilepsy, hallucinogen persistent perception disorder (HPPD), and medication adverse effects (4), (5), (6), (7), (8),(9). They can damage the regions responsible for processing motion, disrupting the perception of movement. The akinetopsia patients often have very specific complaints, which they may describe as seeing individual “frames in a movie reel” or “stop-action motion” or “like I’m in the room with strobe lights”. They may complain that "objects vanish once they move". Rarely, patients may complain of severe visual impairment. 


In conclusion, when traumatic brain injuries, strokes, acquired brain lesions, neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's (visual variant of Alzheimer's disease/ posterior cortical atrophy), epilepsy, hallucinogen persistent perception disorder (HPPD) damage to visual perception part of the brain, a moving object such as a car will appear to “jump” from one stationary position to another. This is akinetopsia. Unfortunately, there is no effective treatment for akinetopsia. For this reason, the disease is not treated directly, but the causes of the disease are treated. After writing this article, I understood better why akinetopsia is a disease of so much interest even though it has so few patients.


References:

  1. Encyclopedia of Neurological Sciences(second edition). (2014). sciencedirect.com. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B978012385157400169


  1. S. ZEKI, CEREBRAL AKINETOPSIA (VISUAL MOTION BLINDNESS): A REVIEW, Brain, Volume 114, Issue 2, April 1991, Pages 811-824,


  1. Ovsiew, F. (2014). The Zeitraffer phenomenon, akinetopsia, and the visual perception of speed of motion: A case report. Neurocase, 20, 269 –272.


  1. Mark Nawrot. Disorders of motion and depth. Neurologic Clinics. 21(3) 2003, Pages 609-629, ISSN 0733-8619, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0733-8619(02)00126-3.

 

  1. Halpern J.H., Lerner A.G., Passie T. (2016) A Review of Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0733861902001263


  1. Kengo Maeda,  Yoshiko Sugihara, Tomoyuki Shiraishi. Akinetopsia with achromatopsia due to focal epilepsy. 2019 Apr;67:27-29. doi: 10.1016/j.seizure.2019.03.004. Epub 2019 Mar 6.PMID: 30856459 DOI: 10.1016/j.seizure.2019.03.004


  1. Po-Heng Tsai, Mario F. Mendez. AKINETOPSIA IN THE POSTERIOR CORTICAL VARIANT OF ALZHEIMER DISEASE September 01, 2009; 73 (9) CLINICAL/SCIENTIFIC NOTES First published August 31, 2009, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1212/WNL.0b013e3181b59c07


  1. Kengo Maeda.Akinetopsia on Driving.J Stroke Cerebrovasc Dis. 2019 Jul;28(7):e102-e103. doi: 10.1016/j.jstrokecerebrovasdis.2019.02.036. Epub 2019 Apr 26.PMID: 31036340

  2. Kotaro Sakurai 1, Tsugiko Kurita 1, Youji Takeda 1, Hideaki Shiraishi 2, Ichiro Kusumi 1.Akinetopsia as epileptic seizure. Epilepsy Behav Case Rep.2013 May 20;1:74-6. doi: 10.1016/j.ebcr.2013.04.002. PMID: 25667833. PMCID: PMC415062

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