What the Phenomenon of Kinesia Paradoxa Can Teach Us
Four ways to ignite our brain’s hidden potential.
Posted November 4, 2025 | Reviewed by Margaret Foley
I am a neurologist specializing in Parkinson’s disease and movement disorders. Studying these conditions offers a rare window into how the subconscious motor system works and reveals the brain’s mysterious capacity for both failure and astonishing resilience .
During my third-year clinical rotation in medical school, an elderly man in a wheelchair arrived at the clinic. His face was expressionless, his voice soft, and his hands trembled with that rhythmic “pill-rolling” motion, all hallmarks of Parkinson’s disease. So far, it was an ordinary encounter.
But as the visit ended, the professor did something entirely unexpected. He reached into his desk drawer, pulled out a small ball, and tossed it to the patient. We students collectively gasped, certain it would strike him. Instead, the man raised his right arm and caught it—swiftly, and gracefully. For that brief instant, the disease seemed to vanish.
This was kinesia paradoxa , a phenomenon where a person with Parkinson’s, immobile a moment before, suddenly moves with fluid precision when emotion , urgency, or instinct takes hold.
I was transfixed. This man, who moments earlier seemed trapped in his body, revealed that the capacity for movement still existed—it was simply hidden. I found myself wondering: How can we unlock these hidden pathways? That question guided me toward a lifelong career studying Parkinson’s disease.
Over the years, I have witnessed this paradox countless times. Randall, who shuffles slowly across my exam room, once insisted he still jogs every morning. When I looked skeptical, he leaned forward, took a runner’s stance, and sprinted smoothly down the hallway. A man described in the New England Journal of Medicine could barely walk, yet cycled effortlessly through the streets of the Netherlands. A retired professor, confined to a wheelchair, proudly showed me a video of himself swinging a golf club—his form still elegant, his body remembering the motion.
In Parkinson’s disease, degeneration of the substantia nigra leads to reduced dopamine in the basal ganglia, disrupting the brain’s ability to coordinate movement automatically. Actions that were once effortless, such as walking, writing, or buttoning a shirt, become deliberate and slow. This isn’t due to muscle weakness, but to the loss of the choreography that normally unfolds beneath awareness. And yes, this is the same dopamine we associated with pleasure and reward; dopamine is a neurotransmitter of action , converting intention into movement.
At Dr. Ann Graybiel’s lab at MIT, elegant experiments explored dopamine’s role as mice learned to navigate a maze for a piece of cheese.
At first, dopamine was released steadily throughout each trial, peaking when the mouse finally reached the reward. During this early, effortful phase, the dorsomedial striatum (DMS), the region linked to goal-directed behavior, was most active. But as the mice repeated the task, the dopamine pattern shifted. Spikes appeared only at the start (anticipation) and end (reward), while activity during the run itself faded. Neural activity also migrated from the DMS to the dorsolateral striatum (DLS), the region tied to habit formation .
Graybiel called this “task bracketing,” or “chunking.” Once the maze-running became automatic, the brain no longer needed continuous dopamine. Instead, brief bursts at the beginning and end were enough. This dopamine reward created a shortcut for actions the brain expects to repeat, ultimately conserving energy.
Another key discovery, by Kravitz et al., revealed two opposing classes of neurons in the basal ganglia, the so-called “Go” and “No-Go” neurons:
These inhibitory “No-Go” neurons act as gatekeepers, suppressing other motor programs when one is in progress, explaining why we can’t easily draw a square with one hand and a triangle with the other.
In Parkinson’s, too little dopamine weakens the Go signal, while overactive No-Go neurons inhibit motion. As a result, movements once effortless become unreliable. Yet if jump-started, bypassing the difficulty of initiation, certain motor sequences can still flow smoothly through the brain’s residual “autopilot” circuits that require less dopamine.
How to Apply This Brain Lesson in Our Life
In Parkinson’s disease, the right cue—music, counting, or visual targets—can sometimes help patients bypass blocked motor circuit initiation. We can try to apply the same principle in our daily life, when we’re mentally or emotionally “stuck.”
Here are four ways to ignite your brain’s hidden potential:
Kinesia paradoxa reminds us that we all have hidden pathways waiting for the right signal. Whether through rhythm, imagination , emotion, or habit, our task is not just to push harder, but to listen more deeply and to find the right cue to unlock what has always been there.
Melo-Thomas, Liana and Schwarting, Rainer K. W. "Paradoxical kinesia may no longer be a paradox waiting for 100 years to be unraveled" Reviews in the Neurosciences, vol. 34, no. 7, 2023, pp. 775-799.
Snijders AH, Bloem BR. Cycling for Freezing of Gait. N Engl J Med. 2010;362(13):e46. doi:10.1056/NEJMicm0810287
Nonnekes J, Ružicka E, Nieuwboer A, Hallett M, Fasano A, Bloem BR. Compensation Strategies for Gait Impairments in Parkinson Disease: A Review. JAMA Neurol. 2019 Jun 1;76(6):718-725. doi: 10.1001/jamaneurol.2019.0033. PMID: 30907948.
Sacks, O. 1983. Awakenings . New York: E.P. Dutton.
Kravitz AV, Freeze BS, Parker PR, Kay K, Thwin MT, Deisseroth K, Kreitzer AC. Regulation of parkinsonian motor behaviours by optogenetic control of basal ganglia circuitry. Nature. 2010 Jul 29;466(7306):622-6.
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Michiko Kimura Bruno, M.D., is a Movement Disorder Neurologist, practicing in Honolulu.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.