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Summary

Anton syndrome (AS), also called Anton–Babinski syndrome, is a rare form of visual anosognosia seen in patients with lesions of bilateral occipital lobes (primary visual cortices). It is thought that AS was first unknowingly described by Roman philosopher and politician Seneca in AD 63, who wrote in his Moral Letters of Lucilius about his wife’s slave who had become acutely blind but could not appreciate her blindness. Though another case would be described by French Renaissance writer Michel de Montaigne in the sixteenth century, this condition would not be described by a physician until 1864 when Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist Gabriel Anton described the case of “Ursula M,” who denied her objective blindness. The term anosognosia was later coined by François Babinski in 1914, referring to a patient’s unawareness of his/her neurological or physical deficits.