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A puzzling case of seizures and visual hallucinations during clomipramine treatment with a high dose but causing a low serum concentration.

We present a puzzling case of a 25-year-old depressive man suffering from seizures and visual hallucinations during clomipramine treatment with a high dose but causing a low serum concentration. We examined alleles of cytochrome P450 (CYP) isozymes. It was revealed that he was not an ultrarapid metabolizer for CYP2D6, and that the genotypes were homozygous for CYP2D6J and heterozygous for CYP2C19m1. Throughout the treatment period, his compliance was good. Since he was a smoker, it seems likely that his low clomipramine level was due to smoking-induced CYP1A2 activity. These findings suggest that smoking-induced CYP1A2 activity overcomes the possibly inhibiting effects of homozygosity for CYP2D6J and heterozygosity for CYP2C19m1, and that high-dose clomipramine is not always a direct cause of seizures.

Adult↗

Multi-family treatment for patients with persistent auditory hallucinations and their relatives: a pilot study.

OBJECTIVE: To test feasibility and effectiveness of multi-family treatment (MFT) for patients with persistent auditory hallucinations. METHOD: A naturalistic pilot study with 6-month follow-up of 12 patients and 10 relatives. Pre- and post-treatment assessment concerned compliance, satisfaction, subjective burden, and control of voices, psychopathology, quality of life, social functioning and burden on the family. RESULTS: Significant improvements were found in all domains. Compliance and satisfaction with treatment were satisfactory. Self-help contacts outside treatment sessions increased over time. CONCLUSION: MFT may be considered a potentially effective form of additional treatment for refractory voice hearers.

Activities of Daily Living↗

Persistent visual hallucinations secondary to chronic solvent encephalopathy: case report and review of the literature.

A case of solvent encephalopathy presenting with persistent visual hallucinations, and characterised by a diffusely abnormal EEG and delayed visually evoked responses to checkerboard pattern reversal (VERs), is described. Abnormalities in the EEG and VERs showed minimal improvement over many months of abstinence from glue sniffing. The literature on the neurological sequelae of solvent abuse is reviewed.

Adolescent↗

Ictal magnetoencephalographic discharges from elementary visual hallucinations of status epilepticus.

PURPOSE: To report the rare opportunity to study ictal magnetoencephalography (MEG) in a 26 year old man with simple partial status epilepticus that presented as elementary visual hallucinations (EVHs) in the right upper visual field. METHODS: The patient described his EVHs as "snowing on TV," "flickering lights," and "rotating coloured balls" that continued for several days. MEG and simultaneous EEG were recorded twice: during an episode of EVHs (ictal recordings) and after EVHs were controlled by medications (interictal recordings). RESULTS: During EVHs, MEG showed continuous periodic epileptiform discharges over the left posterior superior temporal region, while simultaneous EEG showed rhythmic theta waves and sporadic spikes over the left temporal region. The MEG discharge consisted of a three phase spike complex. Equivalent current dipoles (ECDs), modelled from spike complexes, localised in the left superior temporal area. After drug treatment controlled the EVHs, interictal MEG and EEG showed rare spikes over the same left temporal region. The average ictal ECD moment (mean (SD)) (128.7 (32.8 nAm)) was significantly weaker than the average interictal ECD moment (233.0 (63.9) nAm) (p<0.05). CONCLUSIONS: The continuous, periodic, and clustered discharges seen on ictal MEG were the sources of EVH. The weaker ictal ECD sources were frequently not detected by scalp EEG, while the stronger interictal sources, presumably originating from an extensive interictal zone, were sufficiently large to be seen as EEG spikes.

Adult↗

Dysarthria and visual hallucinations due to flecainide toxicity.

A 65 year old man with recurrent ventricular tachyarrhythmias post myocardial infarction developed dysarthria and visual hallucinations due to flecainide toxicity. A readily available assay is required for estimating serum flecainide levels in patients with diminished renal or hepatic function or failed arrhythmia suppression.

Aged↗

Auditory verbal hallucinations--breaking the silence of inner dialogue.

Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) are usually defined as perceptions of speech that occur in the absence of any appropriate external stimulus. This definition, we argue, is false. We maintain that AVHs are disorders of self-consciousness that are best understood as the becoming conscious of inner dialogue. Normally, subconscious interior conversations are experienced as a sense of partnership between distinct parts: we feel these parts as distinct, but also integrated and collaborating with each other in decision-making and in self-representation. AVHs attest to a breakdown in this process of interior conversation: the feeling of unity in duality falls apart, and the dialectic partnership on which self-representation is grounded shatters into a mere dichotomy. There is a fracture in self-consciousness. If ipseity (i.e. the prereflective modality of self-awareness, the self-feeling of one's own self in which the one who feels and what is felt is but one thing) is lacking, the sense of unity weakens, and the sense of duality increases. This crisis of ipseity is accompanied by an increase of reflexivity (i.e. the process through which I take a part of myself as a focal object of awareness). Hyperreflexivity contributes to the objectification of the sense of duality and to the loss of the sense of 'myness' of inner speech. In schizophrenics, inner dialogue becomes anomalously manifest. Whereas in normal conditions, inner dialogue is the medium for self-representation, AVHs arise through its morbid objectification: inner speech comes to the foreground in the concrete fashion of alien 'voices'.

Awareness↗

Benevolent voices are not so kind: the functional significance of auditory hallucinations.

BACKGROUND: This study measures the impact of beliefs about auditory hallucinations on social functioning. SAMPLING AND METHODS: Twenty-nine subjects who met the ICD-10 criteria for schizophrenia or a schizo-affective disorder were included. Beliefs about voices and coping responses as measured by the Beliefs about Voices Questionnaire were compared with social functioning as assessed with the Life Skills Profile (LSP). RESULTS: The belief that voices are benevolent was associated with poor communication. Engagement with voices was correlated with the non-turbulence and the compliance factors of the LSP. Patients who held the belief that their voices were benevolent functioned significantly more poorly on the communication factor of the LSP than patients who interpreted their voices as malevolent. DISCUSSION: The results indicate that a positive relationship with voices may affect social functioning. However, the size of the sample is small and patients with benevolent voices are overrepresented. Nonetheless, these results have implications for the use of cognitive therapy for psychotic symptoms.

Activities of Daily Living↗

Multiple visual hallucinations and pseudohallucinations in one individual patient: when the world is turning upside down and the television keeps falling to the ground while dwarfs are parading on the ceiling.

We report on a patient who experienced visual hallucinations and pseudohallucinations comprising palinopsia, peduncular hallucinosis, and oblique vision. The most probable etiologies of these phenomena are discussed with respect to clinical presentation and findings on computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging.

Aged↗

Potential link between hallucination and nausea/vomiting induced by alcohol? An empirical clinical finding.

Medical records of 1,911 alcoholics admitted to the Alcohol Inpatient Service at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque (USA) were examined to find the frequencies among there variables: hallucination (H), nausea/vomiting (N/V), and elevated liver enzymes (L). The variable L is thought to be independent of neurotransmissions. By contingency table analysis with chi 2 test, N/V and H are found to be positively significantly correlated (p less than 0.0001) whereas L and H are not found to be correlated. These empirical data suggest that there is a potential link between H and N/V in alcohol intoxication/withdrawal. Careful observation of the symptoms and signs of alcohol intoxication/withdrawal may be a useful research tool for elucidating human neuroreceptors in the central nervous system.

Alcoholism↗

True conversive hallucinations.

A case of true conversive hallucinations in a 19-year-old female soldier is described. This phenomenon is rare and should be distinguished from psychotic or dissociative states.

Adult↗

Recognition of hallucinations: a new multidimensional model and methodology.

Both from the clinical and mathematical perspectives, symptom recognition has received less attention than disease recognition. To redress this balance, it is imperative that multidimensional models are constructed for each and all mental symptoms. This paper offers one such model for "hallucinations', and a set of prototypical data comparing the performance of pattern recognition techniques (cluster and discriminant analyses) and neural networks (Kohonen and backpropagation). It is concluded that multidimensional models are less wasteful of information than (current) categorial ones. Because of this and of the fact that symptom structure is likely to be "isomorphic' with the brain region where the corresponding signal is generated, it is recommended that multidimensional models are preferentially used in neurobiological research.

Bipolar Disorder↗

Perceptual grouping due to pitch and amplitude in hallucinating schizophrenics.

17 subjects with a diagnosis of schizophrenia and hallucinations in their case history were compared with 16 subjects of a reference group regarding the appearance of a perception of streaming in a presentation of pitch alternating tones. One scale going up and down was used as part of a stimulus and the same scale going down and up as the other part (as distractor). The amplitude of the distractor was varied in order to make the perceptual regrouping (streaming) evident, which normally occurs when the amplitude approaches the same level in the two stimuli. Sixteen presentations were made. The subjects of the reference group began to hear the streaming after the sixth presentation and all of them heard it at the eighth. At the eleventh presentation some ceased to perceive any streaming and none heard it after the fourteenth presentation. In the schizophrenic group none showed a normal pattern. Overall, less than half of the schizophrenic probands heard a streaming when subjects in the reference group did. Amongst those who did, a few heard it early and kept hearing it to the end. Others started to hear it late and kept hearing it to the end, while a few heard it on and off. The remarkable aberrant grouping strategies among the schizophrenics are discussed in relation to current ideas on perceptual disturbances of the illness.

Acoustic Stimulation↗

Semantic organization of hallucinated "voices" in schizophrenia.

The authors found that the different hallucinated "voices" of four schizophrenic subjects reported over 1-3 weeks expressed semantic content that was at least as persistent as clauses sampled from single 5-7-minute conversational discourses of four comparison speakers. The high degree of semantic recurrence of voices from one day to the next may contribute to the mistaken belief that these experiences derive from a particular nonself agent or speaker.

Adult↗

Auditory hallucinations after right temporal gyri resection.

The authors present a case study on the development of auditory hallucinations secondary to right temporal lobe damage. Surgical resection in the study patient was of the right superficial middle and inferior temporal gyri. Carbamazepine at a dosage of 800 mg daily was the most effective medication used. A multidisciplinary approach involving the neurosurgeon, psychiatrist, family, and rehabilitation specialist is necessary in managing the psychiatric sequelae of brain injury.

Adult↗