basal ganglia hallucination

Fahr's syndrome is a rare disease entity which presents with multiple neurological symptoms like movement disorder or cognitive impairment. We describe a case of a young male patient who presented with symptoms mimicking schizophrenia. He failed to improve despite medical management. He developed an episode of seizure which prompted us to make a computed tomography (CT) scan of the brain, revealing bilateral calcification of basal ganglia, despite normal serum calcium and parathyroid hormone (PTH) levels. This case experience explains the need to rule out all pathological causes of hallucinations before making a diagnosis of schizophrenia...

BACKGROUND: Manipulation of multisensory integration induces illusory perceptions of body ownership. Patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), a neurodegenerative disorder characterised by striatal dopamine deficiency, are prone to illusions and hallucinations and have sensory deficits. Dopaminergic treatment also aggravates hallucinations in PD. Whether multisensory integration in body ownership is altered by PD is unexplored. OBJECTIVE: To study the effect of dopamine neurotransmission on illusory perceptions of body ownership...

Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) is a serious age-dependent human neurodegenerative disease, with multiple debilitating symptoms, including dementia, psychosis and significant motor deficits, but with little or no effective treatments. This comparative ligand autoradiographical study has quantified histamine H3 receptors (H3R) in a series of major cortical and basal ganglia structures in human DLB and Alzheimer's (AD) post-mortem cases using the highly selective radioligand, [(3)H] GSK189254. In the main, the levels of H3 receptor were largely preserved in DLB cases when compared with aged-matched controls...

An 86-year-old woman with a one-year history of dementia was admitted to our hospital complaining of loss of appetite, hallucinations, and disturbance of consciousness. She gradually presented with chorea-like involuntary movements of the extremities. Diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) showed bilateral symmetrical hyperintense signals in the basal ganglia. The serum vitamin B12 level was below the lower detection limit of 50 pg/ml. The homocysteine level was markedly elevated at 115.8 nmol/ml...

We report the patient of a 53-year-old woman who developed subacute-onset marked tonge protrusion and bite. She was diagnosed as dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) from the clinical features including progressive cognitive decline, visual hallucinations, parkinsonism, and severe insomnia and depression, and the radiological finding of low dopamine transported uptake in basal ganglia by Dat SCAN and low blood circulation in occipital lobe of cerebrum. The patient received 600 mg doses of levodopa for over a year, followed by rotigotine and ropinirole with a rapid increase of dosage...

It is important to differentiate dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) and other dementia, especially Alzheimer disease (AD), because the medical treatment, management, and the prognosis of these diseases are different. In regard to clinical features, DLB patients have relatively mild memory disturbance, fluctuating cognition, more severe disturbances of attention, executive function, visuospacial function, visual hallucination, depression, autonomic symptoms, REM sleep behavior disorder, and idiopathic parkinsonism compared to AD patients...

We report a case of histopathologically-confirmed primary central nervous system lymphoma who was initially diagnosed as demyelinating encephalopathy. A 58-year-old woman was admitted with confusion and left hemiparesis. Head MR showed abnormal flaky hypointense T1 and hyperintense T2 signals at right thalamus, splenium of corpus callosum, bilateral cerebral peduncle, pons, medulla oblongata, basal ganglia and right corona radiata. Her mental status improved a little and she was discharged from hospital after neuroprotective treatment...

Kosaka and colleagues first reported dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) in 1976. They have also established the concept of DLB. It is important to differentiate DLB from other dementia, especially Alzheimer disease (AD), because the medical treatment, management, and prognosis of DLB and AD are different. We have used several clinical features and imaging tools to differentiate between DLB and AD. With regard to clinical features, patients with DLB have relatively mild memory disturbances and fluctuating cognition...

Many patients with Lewy body dementia develop visual hallucinations and other psychiatric symptoms. These patients are hypersensitive to antipsychotic drugs. Although patients tolerate atypical better than typical antipsychotics, both types can cause major extrapyramidal side effects. The anticonvulsant mood stabilizer topiramate, which does not cause parkinsonism, has been used as adjuvant therapy for both the positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia; these symptoms can resemble those of Lewy body dementia...

Acute onset of psychosis in an older or elderly individual without history of previous psychiatric disorders should prompt a thorough workup for neurologic causes of psychiatric symptoms. This report compares and contrasts clinical features of new onset of psychotic symptoms between two patients, one with an acute basal ganglia hemorrhagic stroke and another with an acute mid-brain ischemic stroke. Delusions and hallucinations due to basal ganglia lesions are theorized to develop as a result of frontal lobe dysfunction causing impairment of reality checking pathways in the brain, while visual hallucinations due to mid-brain lesions are theorized to develop due to dysregulation of inhibitory control of the ponto-geniculate-occipital system...

BACKGROUND: Peduncular hallucinosis is a rare form of visual hallucination often described as vivid, colorful visions of people and animals. The exact pathophysiology is unknown; however, most cases have been described in relation to lesions in the thalamus or midbrain. CASE REPORT: We present the case of a 59-year-old female with peduncular hallucinosis associated with infarction in the right basal ganglia with the background of malignant hypertension. The patient's visual hallucinations decreased without pharmaceutical treatment by the time of discharge and on further follow-up had resolved completely...

AIMS: Primary familial brain calcification (PFBC) is a rare disorder characterized by abnormal deposits of calcium in the basal ganglia and cerebellum. PFBC can present with a spectrum of neuropsychiatric symptoms resembling those seen in dementia and schizophrenia. Mutations in a few genes have been identified as causing PFBC: namely, the SLC20A2 gene that codes for the sodium-dependent phosphate transporter and the PDGFRB gene that codes for the platelet-derived growth factor receptor β (PDGF-Rβ)...

BACKGROUND: Clinical presentations of pathologically confirmed corticobasal degeneration (CBD) vary, and the heterogeneity makes its clinical diagnosis difficult, especially when a patient lacks any motor disturbance in the early stage. METHODS: We compared clinical and pathological features of four pathologically confirmed CBD cases that initially developed non-motor symptoms, including behavioural and psychiatric symptoms but without motor disturbance (CBD-NM), and five CBD cases that initially developed parkinsonism and/or falls (CBD-M)...

BACKGROUND: Visual perception deficits are a recurrent manifestation in Parkinson's disease (PD). Recently, structural abnormalities of fronto-parietal areas and subcortical regions, implicated in visual stimuli analysis, have been observed in PD patients with cognitive decline and visual hallucinations. The aim of the present study was to investigate the salient aspects of visual perception in cognitively unimpaired PD patients. METHODS: Eleven right-handed non-demented right-sided onset PD patients without visuospatial impairment or hallucinations and 11 healthy controls were studied with functional magnetic resonance imaging while performing a specific visuoperceptual/visuospatial paradigm that allowed to highlight the specific process underlying visuospatial judgment...

Familial idiopathic basal ganglia calcification (Fahr`s disease) is a rare neurodegenerative disorder characterized by symmetrical and bilateral calcification of the basal ganglia. Calcifications may also occur in other brain regions such as dentate nucleus, thalamus, and cerebral cortex. Both familial and non-familial cases of Fahr`s disease have been reported, predominantly with autosomal-dominant fashion. The disease has a wide range of clinical presentations, predominantly with neuropsychiatric features and movement disorders...

Fahr's disease is a rare neuropsychiatric disease characterized by bilateral intracranial calcification, primarily in the basal ganglia. The more general term, Fahr's syndrome, is used for primary and secondary basal ganglia calcification, regardless of the etiology, but the term Fahr's disease is used to describe primary, idiopathic cases. Fahr's disease may present with neurological symptoms, such as parkinsonism and extrapyramidal symptoms, dysarthria, paresis, convulsion, and syncope. Psychiatric disorders, including behavioral disorders, psychosis, and mood disorders, as well as cognitive disorders can occur...

OBJECTIVE: The pathogenesis of visual hallucinations (VHs) in Parkinson's disease (PD) has been considered multifactorial. In the pathophysiology of VHs a combination of impaired visual processing and attention has been reported. Imaging studies evidenced a role of the primary visual system and visual association areas as well as a dysfunctional activation of frontal areas in the occurrence of VHs. Due to the functional connections between basal ganglia and frontal areas, a role of basal ganglia and of the fronto-striatal circuits in the pathogenesis of VHs may be postulated...

Clinical features and results of neuroimagings of an 86 year old woman with the Charles Bonnet syndrome are reported. She had become completely blind bilaterally due to cataracts and glaucoma. Shortly after an operation for cataracts, she developed visual hallucinations which lasted for 22 years. She had no deterioration of intelligence. Computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) showed moderate generalized atrophy, particularly of the temporal lobes. A serial single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) study during visual hallucinations demonstrated hyperperfusion in the left temporal region and the basal ganglia and hypoperfusion in the right temporal region...

INTRODUCTION: Psychosis and hallucinations occur in 20-30% of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). In the current study, we investigate cognitive functions in relation to the occurrence of psychosis in PD patients. METHODS: We tested three groups of subjects - PD with psychosis, PD without psychosis and healthy controls - on working memory, learning and transitive inference tasks, which are known to assess prefrontal, basal ganglia and hippocampal functions. RESULTS: In the working memory task, results show that patients with and without psychosis were more impaired than the healthy control group...

OBJECTIVE: To specify the presenting symptoms and clinical course of patients with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and chromosome 9 open reading frame 72 (C9ORF72) repeat expansion. BACKGROUND: The 2011 discovery of the C9ORF72 repeat expansion causing familial FTD and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis has permitted retrospective evaluation of potential defining clinical characteristics that may distinguish carriers of the C9ORF72 mutation from other patients with FTD...