43 The first
related to geometrical patterns (form-constants) which he divided into four classes: (i) grating, lattice, checkerboard; (ii) cobweb; (iii) tunnel, funnel; (iv) spiral. The second related to the perceptual reduplication of objects (polyopia) and changes in perceived size or shape, a syndrome he tentatively linked to visual-vestibular interactions. The third related to changes in the composition of objects with displacements or rearrangements Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical of object features. He argued that the three symptom patterns were found in a range of clinical disorders and reflected undefined neurobiological click here mechanisms. Although it never developed into a clinical classificatory scheme, the importance of the work is Klüver’s Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical Gestalt psychological perspective, viewing visual hallucinations as one of several variants of visual perceptual experience, a position entirely consistent with emerging neuroscientific evidence (see below). Visual hallucinatory syndrome: present Today’s clinical
approach to visual hallucinations is Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical very much as it was in 1936, visual hallucinations being conceived as a unitary pathological symptom distinct from illusions. De Morsier’s convention of defining visual hallucinatory syndromes by the neurological and psychiatric context in which the hallucinations are found is still followed for many conditions (eg, PD, DLB, or peduncular lesions). However, with no consensus as to the cause of CBS hallucinations, Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical in the 1980s a novel approach was formulated that looked back to the classical phenomenological tradition. Phenomenological Charles Bonnet syndrome Until the 1980s, the CBS eponym and its surrounding debate remained entirely within the French neurological and psychiatric literature. However, in 1982, two groups of British psychiatrists, by introducing the syndrome to a wider international audience, initiated the modern era of visual hallucinatory syndromes.44,45 One group, Berrios and Brook, presented a history Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical of CBS in preparation for a survey of visual perceptual problems
in the elderly published 2 years later.46 The other, Damas-Mora et al, wanted to raise awareness of the syndrome to “obviate mistaken crotamiton psychiatric diagnosis.” Through translated extracts from the classical French literature, Damas-Mora et al abstracted core phenomenological features including hallucination content (simple and complex forms), their onset and temporal evolution, duration, relation to insight and, echoing Leroy’s Lilliputian syndrome, their association with a pleasant emotional tone. However, DamasMora et al’s most important contribution was the implicit recognition that there might be more than one type of visual hallucination and that pure clinical forms might be revealed by excluding certain disorders.