A Brief Psychotic Episode with Depressive Symptoms in Silent Right Frontal Lobe Infarct

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. Neurological deficits are the most common presentation in stroke, and nearly a third of patients that suffer a stroke may experience psychological disorders such as depression and anxiety, related to physical disability. The present case report describes an elderly female patient who presented with hallucinations and depressive symptoms, and was discovered to have a recent right frontal brain infarction, without other significant neurological deficits.