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Bobble-Head Doll Syndrome is a rare neurological movement disorder in which patients, usually children around age 3, begin to bob their head and shoulders forward and back, or sometimes side-to-side, involuntarily. The syndrome is related to cystic lesions and swelling of the third ventricle in the brain. Symptoms of Bobble-Head Doll Syndrome are diverse but can be grouped into two categories physical and neurological.^[1] The most common form of treatment is surgical implanting of a shunt to relieve the swelling of the brain.^[2]

Bobble-Head Doll Syndrome is first reported as a movement disorder in patients. However, after performing several tests and scans of the brain, the characteristic movement is found to be neurological in origin.

The main physical symptom of Bobble-Head Doll Syndrome is the most obvious to diagnose and involves two to three bobs per second of the head, which can sometimes also include the shoulders and upper torso. The patient is unaware of the movements and unable to control them unless directed to stop or given simple mental tasks such as basic arithmetic or spelling words. However, once the task is completed by the patient, the bobbing tends to resume after about a minute. Thus, the bobbing is described by doctors as volitional, or able to be stopped by making a conscious decision.^[3] The bobbing also disappears while the patient is asleep, a common feature of most movement disorders.

A supplemental symptom of the head bobbing is a presence of ataxia. Several patients were reported as having difficulty walking, running, and climbing steps because of the bobbing. It is likely that the constant bobbing has interrupted the patient’s ability to balance which requires input from several sources including the vestibular, ocular, somatosensory, and motor systems. Although the nature of these movements is physical, their source is neurological, generally stemming from a dysfunction of parts of the nervous system which control motor function.

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