| Identifier |
162-2 |
| Title |
Congenital Ocular Motor Apraxia |
| Creator |
Shirley H. Wray, MD, PhD, FRCP |
| Contributors |
David Zee, MD; Steve Smith, Videographer |
| Affiliation |
(SHW) Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School; Director, Unit for Neurovisual Disorders, Massachusetts General Hospital; (DZ) Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland |
| Subject |
Congenital Ocular Motor Apraxia; Head Thrust |
| History |
This little boy was born at term after a normal pregnancy. There was no family history of a neurological or ophthalmological disease. His mother noted from birth that he turned his head instead of his eyes and frequently tried to fix objects on either side by making a quick turn of the head past the object of regard. Random conjugate horizontal and vertical eye movements were normal. Aside from the eye movement disorder, the child was considered to be a normal visually attentive child. His milestones were normal. A neurological and ophthalmological examination showed no abnormality The head thrust and failure to initiate a voluntary saccade led to the diagnosis of congenital ocular motor apraxia a syndrome first described and named by David Cogan in 1952. Prognosis: Cogan followed a number of the children. In Cogan's Case 1 (AJS), followed to age 9 ½ , it was noted that the child learned to walk with only slightly more difficulty than a normal child and he participated in the usual athletic activities of childhood with little difficulty. The rapid thrusts of the head, which were so disconcerting to parents and physicians, gradually became less noticeable. However, at age 9 ½, the child was unable to read. He was only able to read one word at a time because of an inability to scan the line of print. His mother also observed that he stumbled more than most children especially when he was amongst strangers and he had difficulty in making sharp turns when running or walking. On examination Cogan noted no improvement in the child's ability to initiate a voluntary horizontal saccadic eye movement inspite of the boy having received extensive exercises on learning to control the eyes by looking in a mirror while rotating his body. Of particular interest was the parents' observation that the child appeared to develop a spasm of gaze when commanded to look in one or the other direction. As a consequence his parents had purposely avoided the command "look". |
| Anatomy |
The brain generates eye movements by processing information in multiple cortical areas - the eye fields. The frontal eye field generates intentional saccades to visual targets, reflective saccades, memory-guided saccades and anti-saccades. The parietal eye field initiates visuospatial attention by triggering visually guided reflective saccades and disengaging fixation. At the cortical level potential targets for gaze are analyzed and selected and the decision is made to execute a saccadic eye movement from one target to another or a pursuit eye movement to follow a moving target. Apraxia of eye movements is a normal condition in infants during the first few weeks of life. The defect in congenital ocular motor apraxia causing failure to initiate voluntary horizontal saccadic eye movements may reflect disruption or immaturity of descending pathways from both the frontal and parietal eye fields. Genetics: Ocular motor apraxia may occur in association with ataxia in a number of autosomal recessive ataxic disorders of childhood. A number of different genes, which play a role in maintaining the integrity of neuronal DNA, have been identified in these disorders. (See Table 1, Pg 362 ref 6. See also ref 4, 5, 8 and 9). |
| Disease/Diagnosis |
Congenital Ocular Motor Apraxia |
| Clinical |
This infant shows all the characteristic ocular motor signs of congenital ocular motor apraxia (OMA). • Intermittent failure to initiate horizontal saccades to right and left • Rapid head thrusts to fixate a target • When the eyes are looking to the right, in order to fixate a target in primary position, the child thrusts his head to the left to trigger vestibular induced saccades to change gaze. • The head overshoots the position of the target of attention but, once fixation is attained, the head turns back to the primary position. • The sequence of events is completed in a matter of seconds. Tonic lateral deviation of the eyes present on sustained (vestibular) rotation of the body were noted (but are not illustrated on the video). There are three strategies that can be used to initiate horizontal saccades in OMA 1. by using the vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR) to drag the eyes around 2. by blinks which turn off the omnipause neurons in the pons to allow the excitatory burst neurons to fire and generate a saccadic eye movement and/or 3. by simultaneous elicited eye and head movements which use central head commands to initiate horizontal saccades while suppressing the VOR. In normal children head commands usually precede the saccadic command. Children with OMA can learn to read but are slow readers because they have to utilize a head thrust to bring their eyes back to read the beginning of the line. (5) |
| Presenting Symptom |
Jerky head movements |
| Ocular Movements |
Failure to Initiate Voluntary Horizontal Saccadic Eye Movements; Head Thrust; Ocular Motor Apraxia |
| Neuroimaging |
N/A |
| Treatment |
There are no eye exercises to correct this ocular motility disorder. |
| Etiology |
Congenital developmental disorder |
| Supplementary Materials |
Ocular Motor Apraxia: https://collections.lib.utah.edu/details?id=2174218 |
| Date |
1973 |
| References |
1. Cogan DG. A type of congenital ocular motor apraxia presenting jerky head movements. Trans Am Acad Ophthalmol 1952;56:853-858. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/13005548 2. Cogan DG. Congenital ocular motor apraxia. Canad J Ophthalmol 1966, 1:253-260. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/5977435 3. Cogan, DG, Chu FC, Reingold D, Tychsen L. A long-term follow-up of congenital ocular motor apraxia Case report. Neuro-ophthalmol 1980;1:145-147. 4. Criscuolo C, Chessa L, DiGiandomenico S, Mancini P, Sacca F, Grieco GS, Piane M, Barbieri F, DeMichele G, Banfi S, Pierelli F, Rizzuto N, Santorelli FM, Gallosti L. Fill A and Casali C. Ataxia with oculomotor apraxia type 2: a clinical, pathologic and genetic study. Neurology 2006, 66:1207-1210. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16636238 5. Leigh RJ, Zee DS. The Neurology of Eye Movements. 4th Ed. Oxford University Press, New York 2006. 6. Onodera O. Spinocerebellar ataxia with ocular motor apraxia and DNA repair. Table 1, pg 362. Neuropath 2006;26:361-367. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16961074 7. Rambold H, Moser A, Zurowski B, Gbadamosi J, Kompf D, Sprenger A, Helmchen C. Saccade Initiation in ocular motor apraxia. J Neurol 2006;253:950-952. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16619125 8. Shahwan A, Byrd PJ, Taylor AMR, Nestor T, Ryan S, King MD. Atypical presentation of ataxia - oculomotor apraxia type 1. Developmental Med and Child Neurol 2006;48:529-432. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16700949 9. Tsao CY. Type 1 Ataxia with oculomotor apraxia with aprataxin gene mutations in two American Children. J of Child Neurol 2005, 20:619-620. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16159533 10. Zee DS, Yee RD, Singer HS. Congenital oculomotor apraxia. Brain 1977;100:581-600. |
| Language |
eng |
| Format |
video/mp4 |
| Type |
Image/MovingImage |
| Source |
16mm tape |
| Relation is Part of |
162-3,162-5, 162-6 |
| Collection |
Neuro-Ophthalmology Virtual Education Library: Shirley H. Wray Collection: https://novel.utah.edu/Wray/ |
| Publisher |
North American Neuro-Ophthalmology Society |
| Holding Institution |
Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library, University of Utah |
| Rights Management |
Copyright 2002. For further information regarding the rights to this collection, please visit: https://NOVEL.utah.edu/about/copyright |
| ARK |
ark:/87278/s6jd7tbp |
| Setname |
ehsl_novel_shw |
| ID |
188580 |
| Reference URL |
https://collections.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s6jd7tbp |
