Patients with Parkinson's disease, although impaired, can sometimes move effectively under visual guidance. The stimuli that often elicit such paradoxical movement are similar to those that relay visual information to the cerebellum. We suggest that many instances of paradoxical movement may be explained by the fact that the pathways relaying those visual stimuli can bypass the damaged basal ganglia and allow an intact cerebellar circuit to be used for visuomotor control.