| Identifier |
162-5 |
| 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 3 year old boy was referred for evaluation of inattention. He was born at term after a normal pregnancy. He had been noted, in early childhood, to have difficulty looking to the right and to the left and was slow to read. |
| 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 • 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. 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 |
| 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 |
162-2, 162-3, 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/s65748mc |
| Setname |
ehsl_novel_shw |
| ID |
188583 |
| Reference URL |
https://collections.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s65748mc |
