basal ganglia hallucination

The MPTP monkey model of Parkinson's disease (PD) has allowed huge advances regarding the understanding of the pathological mechanisms of PD and L-DOPA-induced adverse effects. Among the main findings were the imbalance between the efferent striatal pathways in opposite directions between the hypokinetic and hyperkinetic states of PD. In both normal and parkinsonian monkeys, the combination of behavioral and anatomical studies has allowed the deciphering of the cortico-basal ganglia circuits involved in both movement and behavioral disorders...

Objective: To investigate the clinical manifestations, laboratory findings, treatment and outcome of anti-GQ1b antibody syndrome. Method: The clinical manifestations, laboratory examination, diagnosis, treatment and prognosis of (4 patients 4 male patients, from 4 to 12 years) with anti-GQ1b syndrome in Beijing Children's Hospital affiliated to Capital Medical University from 2015 to 2016 were retrospectively analyzed. Result: All 4 children presented with ataxia. Case 1 showed impaired speech, ptosis and weakness of arms; case 2 and 3 had external ophthalmoplegia, weakness of limbs; case 4 presented hypersomnia, irritability and hallucinations...

Psychiatric symptoms may be related to a silent cerebral infarct, a phenomenon that has been described previously in literature. Acute psychosis or other neuropsychiatric symptoms including depression may present in stroke patients and patients with lesions either within the prefrontal or occipital cortices, or in subcortical areas such as the basal ganglia, thalamus, mid-brain, and brainstem. Psychosis in clinical stroke or in silent cerebral infarction is uncommon and not well documented in the literature...

Patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) can experience several behavioral symptoms, such as apathy, agitation, hypersexuality, stereotypic movements, pathological gambling, abuse of antiparkinsonian drugs, and REM sleep behavioral disorders. Psychoses and hallucinations, depression and anxiety disorders, and difficulties in recognizing and experiencing emotions also impair behavior and can cause severe psychosocial problems in patients with PD. Symptoms can be present since early stages of the disease, sometimes even before the appearance of classical motor symptoms, likely in relation to dopamine depletion in basal ganglia and/or to dysfunctions of other neurotrasmitter systems, and others can develop later, in some cases in relation to dopaminergic treatment...

Vascular parkinsonism (VP) is a relatively frequent variant of secondary parkinsonism caused by ischemic or hemorrhagic lesions of basal ganglia, midbrain, or their links with frontal cortex. According to different investigations, various forms of cerebrovascular disease cause 1%-15% of parkinsonism cases. Nonmotor symptoms are frequently found in VP and may negatively influence on quality of life. However, nonmotor symptoms such as hallucinations, orthostatic hypotension, REM-sleep behavior disorder, and anosmia are rarely revealed in VP, which may be noted to another diagnosis or mixed pathology...

Stroke is the second most common cause of death and fourth leading cause of disability worldwide. Post stroke behavioural manifestations are often not recognized, undiagnosed and hence remain untreated. They may even suffer from misdiagnosis of functional disorders before coming at conclusion of organic pathology. Early diagnosis and prompt treatment helps in lowering the overall morbidity related to stroke and improves quality of life of these patients with rare manifestations. Here, we report two cases of elderly female patients presenting with delusions and hallucinations subsequent to stroke, with lesions in basal ganglia detected on neuro-imaging...

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 (H3 R) 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...