Rare diseases · Sign or symptom
Saccadic smooth pursuit interruptions
HP:0001152
What it means
An abnormality of tracking eye movements in which smooth pursuit is interrupted by an abnormally high number of saccadic movements.
Tracking eye movements consist of two different components, namely, smooth pursuit and saccades. Smooth pursuit, or just pursuit, is a class of rather slow eye movements that minimizes retinal target motion. Saccades are rapid eye movements that align the fovea with the target. The function of smooth pursuit is to keep a slowly moving target stable on the fovea of each eye. If smooth pursuit cannot keep up with a visual target (i.e., low pursuit gain, which is defined as the ratio of eye movement velocity to target velocity), saccades will be used to help catch up to the visual target, hence the choppy or saccadic appearance when pursuit is impaired.
Rare diseases that can present with this14
Common30–79%
10- Acute infantile liver failure-cerebellar ataxia-peripheral sensory motor neuropathy syndrome
- Adult-onset autosomal recessive cerebellar ataxia
- Autosomal recessive cerebellar ataxia-epilepsy-intellectual disability syndrome due to RUBCN deficiency
- Autosomal recessive spastic paraplegia type 11
- Childhood-onset autosomal recessive slowly progressive spinocerebellar ataxia
- Dentatorubral pallidoluysian atrophy
- Spinocerebellar ataxia type 42
- Spinocerebellar ataxia with axonal neuropathy type 2
- X-linked non progressive cerebellar ataxia
- X-linked progressive cerebellar ataxia
Sometimes5–29%
3The range is how often this sign appears among people diagnosed with each disease — it is not a probability of having any of them. Many of these signs also occur in common, non-rare conditions. A sign on this page is a conversation to have with a clinician, not a conclusion.
Part of the broader category
Also called: Saccadic pursuit movements · Saccadic slow pursuit · Saccadic smooth pursuit
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Start free with EleplanThis page uses the Human Phenotype Ontology (2026-06-23) — Human Phenotype Ontology Consortium, hpo.jax.org. Disease associations from Orphanet (INSERM), CC BY 4.0. Content is educational and is not medical advice.