Walsh & Hoyt: Disorders of Motion Perception (Akinetopsia)

Akinetopsia (cerebral akinetopsia) is the term used to describe complete loss of movement perception from an acquired cerebral lesion. Unlike cerebral achromatopsia, which was described in the late 1800s, akinetopsia was not reported until the 1980s, after the discovery of motion-selective extrastriate regions in monkeys suggested that damage to homologous areas in humans might produce a defect in motion perception. Although akinetopsia requires bilateral cerebral lesions, subtler and generally asymptomatic disturbances of motion perception can occur with unilateral cerebral lesions.