Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

Visual command hallucinations in a patient with pure alexia.

D H Ffytche1, J M Lappin, M Philpot

  • 1Institute of Psychiatry, De Crespigny Park, Denmark Hill, London SE5, UK. d.ffytche@iop.kcl.ac.uk

Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry
|January 7, 2004
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Enriching surgical theatre competence through computer-based simulation.

Radiography (London, England : 1995)·2025
Same author

Early sustained recovery following first episode psychosis: Evidence from the AESOP10 follow-up study.

Schizophrenia research·2018
Same author

Antipsychotic treatment resistance in first-episode psychosis: prevalence, subtypes and predictors.

Psychological medicine·2017
Same author

Ten-year outcomes in first episode psychotic major depression patients compared with schizophrenia and bipolar patients.

Schizophrenia research·2016
Same author

Biological and psychosocial risk factors for psychotic major depression.

Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology·2015
Same author

Diagnostic change 10 years after a first episode of psychosis.

Psychological medicine·2015

This study describes a unique case of syntacto-semantic visual hallucinations, characterized by meaningful, threatening sentences, distinct from typical orthographic hallucinations. These findings suggest a new category of visual text hallucinations potentially linked to brain networks involved in auditory hallucinations.

Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Ophthalmology
  • Psychiatry

Background:

  • Visual hallucinations secondary to eye disease often involve meaningless text (orthographic hallucinations).
  • The visual word form area (VWFA) in the left posterior fusiform gyrus is associated with processing written words.

Observation:

  • A patient presented with syntacto-semantic visual hallucinations—meaningful, grammatically correct sentences, often threatening or commanding.
  • This occurred after bilateral occipito-temporal infarcts, leading to a ventral occipito-temporal syndrome including pure alexia.

Findings:

  • The patient's pure alexia indicates the visual word form area (VWFA) was likely not responsible for the syntacto-semantic hallucinations.
  • The nature of these hallucinations suggests a different underlying neural mechanism than orthographic hallucinations.

Related Experiment Videos

Implications:

  • Syntacto-semantic visual hallucinations may represent a distinct category of textual hallucinations.
  • This phenomenon could be related to the cortical networks involved in auditory hallucinations, such as those seen in schizophrenia.