AUTOMATISM

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does automatism mean? 

• AUTOMATISM (noun)
  The noun AUTOMATISM has 1 sense:

1. any reaction that occurs automatically without conscious thought or reflection (especially the undirected behavior seen in psychomotor epilepsy)

  Familiarity information: AUTOMATISM used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• AUTOMATISM (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Any reaction that occurs automatically without conscious thought or reflection (especially the undirected behavior seen in psychomotor epilepsy)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Hypernyms ("automatism" is a kind of...):

reaction; response (a bodily process occurring due to the effect of some antecedent stimulus or agent)

 Context examples 

The seizure seen in absence epilepsy, consisting of a sudden momentary break in consciousness of thought or activity, often accompanied by automatisms or clonic movements, especially of the eyelids.

(Petit Mal Seizure, Food and Drug Administration)

Generalized seizure that manifests in a form of a brief episode of impairment of consciousness with or without accompanying motor phenomena such as clonic-tonic components, automatisms, or autonomic components.

(Petit Mal Seizure, NCI Thesaurus)