Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T16:20:09.343Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Complex Visual Hallucinations in Partial Blindness due to Eye Disease

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

N. J. White*
Affiliation:
Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine, John Radcliffe Hospital, Headington, Oxford, OX3 9DU

Summary

Three patients experienced complex formed hallucinations during progressive visual failure from eye disease. The hallucinations began abruptly, were brightly coloured stereotyped figures, animals or objects, and appeared to be provoked by light.

As blindness progressed the clarity, frequency and duration of the hallucinations faded. The patients had no abnormalities other than their eye disease, which in two cases was macula degeneration, and choroideraemia in the third.

Type
Papers
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1980 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Duke-Elder, S. & Scott, G. I. (1974) System of Ophthalmology, Vol. XII. London: Henry Kimpton.Google Scholar
Earl, C. J. (1964) Some aspects of optic atrophy. Transactions of Ophthalmological Societies of the United Kingdom, 84, 215–26.Google Scholar
Flynn, W. R. (1962) Visual hallucinations in sensory deprivation. Psychiatric Quarterly, 36, 5565.Google Scholar
Horowitz, M. J. (1964) The imagery of visual hallucinations. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 138, 513–23.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lance, J. W. (1976) Simple formed hallucinations confined to the area of a specific visual field defect. Brain, 99, 719.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
L'Hermitte, J. (1922) Syndrome de la calotte du pédoncule cérébral (les troubles psychosensoriels dans les lésions du mésencéphale. Revue Neurologique, 29, 1359–65.Google Scholar
Ormond, A. W. (1925) Visual hallucinations in sane people. British Medical Journal, iii, 376–8.Google Scholar
Posey, W. C. & Spiller, W. G. (1906) The Eye and the Nervous System, Their Diagnostic Relations. Philadelphia: J. P. Lipincott Co.Google Scholar
Russell, W. R. & Whitty, C. W. M. (1955) Studies in traumatic epilepsy, 3 visual fits. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, 18, 7996.Google Scholar
Weinberger, L. M. & Grant, F. C. (1940) Visual hallucinations and their neuro-optical correlates. Archives of Ophthalmology, 23, 166–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weisman, A. D. & Hackett, T. P. (1958) Psychosis after eye surgery. New England Journal of Medicine, 258, 1284–9.Google Scholar
Zuckerman, A. (1969) Sensory Deprivation. Fifteen Tears of Research (ed. J. P. Zubek). New York: Appleton Century Crofts.Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.