Anton-Babinski syndrome

Anton-Babinski syndrome

Anton-Babinski syndrome, more frequently known as Anton's blindness, is a rare symptom of brain damage occurring in the occipital lobe. People who suffer from it are "cortically blind," but affirm, often quite adamantly and in the face of clear evidence of their blindness, that they are capable of seeing. Failure to see is dismissed by the sufferer through confabulation. It is mostly seen following a stroke, but may also be seen after head injury. It's believed that the cause is damage to two areas :specify the portion of the brain responsible for eyesight and the portion responsible for detecting the presence of visionwhich. Fact|date=March 2008

This condition is named after Gabriel Anton and Joseph Babinski. It is well described by the neurologist Macdonald Critchley:

The sudden development of bilateral occipital dysfunction is likely to produce transient physical and psychical effects in which mental confusion may be prominent. It may be some days before the relatives, or the nursing staff, tumble to the fact that the patient has actually become sightless. This is not only because the patient ordinarily does not volunteer the information that he has become blind, but he furthermore misleads his entourage by behaving and talking as though he were sighted. Attention is aroused however when the patient is found to collide with pieces of furniture, to fall over objects, and to experience difficulty in finding his way around. He may try to walk through a wall or through a closed door on his way from one room to another. Suspicion is still further alerted when he begins to describe people and objects around him which, as a matter of fact, are not there at all.Thus we have the twin symptoms of anosognosia (or lack of awareness of defect) and confabulation, the latter affecting both speech and behaviour. ("Modes of reaction to central blindness", in "The Divine Banquet of the Brain", Raven, New York, 1979, p. 156)

The syndrome may be conceptualised ideally as the converse of blindsight: a syndrome in which part of the visual field is experienced as completely inoperative, but some reliable perception does in fact occur.

In popular culture

Anton-Babinski syndrome was featured in two episodes of the "House, M.D." TV series, titled "Euphoria, Part 1" and "Euphoria, Part 2", although it was ascribed to primary amoebic meningoencephalitis, a disorder that does not cause the syndrome in real life.

The syndrome is also featured prominently in the Rupert Thomson novel The Insult.

ee also

* Cortical blindness
* Anosognosia


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Look at other dictionaries:

  • Anton-Babinski syndrome —    Also known as Anton s syndrome, Anton s symptom, Anton s blindness, anosognosia for blindness, denial of blindness, and visual anosognosia. The eponym Anton Babinski syndrome refers to the Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist Gabriel Anton… …   Dictionary of Hallucinations

  • Anton-Babinski syndrome — An·ton Ba·bin·ski syndrome (ahnґton bə binґske) [G. Anton; Joseph Franзois Fйlix Babinski, French physician, 1857–1932] Anton syndrome …   Medical dictionary

  • Anton's syndrome —    see Anton Babinski syndrome …   Dictionary of Hallucinations

  • Anton-Babinski syndrome — noun A rare symptom of brain damage occurring in the occipital lobe, in which the patient is cortically blind but affirms that he or she is capable of seeing …   Wiktionary

  • Anton syndrome — Anton Babinski syndrome a form of anosognosia in which the patient denies, and often is unaware of, the existence of clinically demonstrable blindness and may resort to confabulation to hide it; it may be the result of denial (q.v.) or of… …   Medical dictionary

  • Anton's blindness —    see Anton Babinski syndrome …   Dictionary of Hallucinations

  • Anton's symptom —    see Anton Babinski syndrome …   Dictionary of Hallucinations

  • Joseph Babinski — Joseph Jules François Félix Babinski (born November 17, 1857, Paris; died October 29, 1932, Paris) was a French neurologist of Polish ethnicity. He is best known for his 1896 description of the Babinski sign, a pathological plantar reflex… …   Wikipedia

  • Gabriel Anton — (July 28, 1858 3 January 1933) was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist. He is primarily remembered for his studies of psychiatric conditions arising from damage to the cerebral cortex and the basal ganglia.Gabriel Anton was a native of Saaz …   Wikipedia

  • phantom eye syndrome —    The term phantom eye syndrome is indebted to the Greek noun phantasma, which means ghost orspectre.It is used to denote a variant of *phantom limb characterized by the perceived presence, mostly of a painful nature, of an eye that is actually… …   Dictionary of Hallucinations

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