A research group led by Professor Etsuro Mori, Assistant Professor Yoshiyuki Nishio and Graduate Student Makoto Uchiyama has successfully evoked Paleidolias, which are hallucination-like visual illusions, in patients with dementia with Lewy bodies, using a newly developed tool, the Paleidolia test. Paleidoria is a phenomenon involving ambiguous forms such as wall stains or clouds being perceived as meaningful objects, such as human faces or animals. It has been considered that paleidolias are linked to visual hallucinations for a long time. Visual hallucination is a core symptom of dementia with Lewy bodies. However, they are rarely observed and frequently missed during a brief clinical examination. The Paleidoria test enables us to evoke visual hallucination-like symptoms directly from patients with dementia and is expected to be a useful tool for differential diagnosis of dementia and accurate evaluation of treatment effect of dementia.

 The research result will be published online in Brain. The paper's title is "Pareidolias: complex visual illusions in dementia with Lewy bodies."

 This research has been supported by Global COE Program (Basic & Translational Research Center for Global Brain Science) and Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research.

More information (Japanese)

[Contact]

(About the research)

Professor Etsuro Mori

Behavioral Neurology and Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory

Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine

TEL: +81-22-717-7358

E-mail: morie*med.tohoku.ac.jp (Replace * with @)

(Public Relations)

Associate professor Fuji Nagami

Public Relations Office of Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine

Tel: +81-22-717-7908, Fax: +81-22-717-8187

E-mail: f-nagami*med.tohoku.ac.jp (Replace * with @)