ABSTRACT
Under the name of time acceleration phenomenen, we have described the following disordered experience: the patient notices a strong, increasing acceleration of the time element for all movement in his environment, like a “film being speeded up.” We have come upon this experience in two cases, an occipital lesion with transient left hemianopia, and the aura of an epileptic, whose attacks began with a left deviation of the head and eyes. In these two cases, acoustic impressions, and at times indirectly perceived speech and music on the radio, also accelerated to the point of incomprehensibility. It resembled an observation first made by Klein, epileptoid attacks with a sensation of accelerated movement in the environment and acceleration of one’s own speech and that of others. In our case with the occipital lesion, it was striking that directly perceived objects and speech were excluded from the apparent acceleration, and that time was perceived as unusually long. Only the last mentioned phenomenon recalled in the experience of some patients with a certain form of optic agnosia (Case of Wilbrand, case of Schn. by Goldstein and Gelb); in our patient there was no trace of optic agnosia (Z. Neur. 151:599, 1934).
