Parkinson’s hallucinations ‘caused by brain abnormality’

SCIENTISTS have found an abnormality in the brains of Parkinson’s Disease sufferers that provides an explanation for why they can “see ghosts”.

Roughly half of people with Parkinson’s disease experience hallucinations. The study used brain imaging and robotics and was carried out on 56 sufferers in Switzerland and Spain.

It found evidence of a flaw in the fronto-temporal cortical brain regions, known as the “presence hallucination” network.

Due to the hallucinations often being experienced spontaneously, studying them has previously been difficult.

Prof Olaf Blanke of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology told Reuters that they developed a testing system that used robots to send matching and non-matching movements and signals to Parkinson’s patients and healthy participants.

The study was published in the Science Translational Medicine journal.

Prof Blanke said that the test could lead to better ways of informing people, before they have any major symptoms, how severe they may suffer from the disease. He said he hoped similar tests could be used to help identify whether people will suffer from the disease.

Joseph Rey, who often sees an hallucination of a guardian angel, said: “They feel like angels protecting me. They follow me around. It’s reassuring in a way, because I am not alone.”

Some Parkinson’s patients suffer from mental symptoms like psychosis, depression, cognitive decline and even dementia.

According to research, hallucinations might be precursors to these more severe mental health symptoms but they often remain under diagnosed.