Cerebral akinetopsia (visual motion blindness). A review

Abstract

Cerebral akinetopsia is a syndrome in which a patient loses specifically the ability to perceive visual motion following cortical lesions outside the striate cortex. There has been only one good case of akinetopsia in the published literature. Yet that case was immediately accepted by the neurological world. In this, cerebral akinetopsia differs markedly from cerebral achromatopsia, the evidence for which was strongly contested for the better part of a century (Zeki, 1990). This article complements the one on cerebral achromatopsia, traces the history of akinetopsia and enquires into why it was so much more readily acceptable than achromatopsia.