Abstract Details

Title Pareidolia as a Manifestation of Folie á Deux

Topic Aging, Dementia, and Behavioral Neurology

Presentation(s) P3 - Poster Session 3 (5:30 PM-6:30 PM)

Poster/Presentation
Number 9-022

Objective The spreading of pareidolia, the visualization of one image inside another image, from one member of a couple to another one is seen in a subtype of folie á deux called folie imposée

Background A 27 year old right handed male started having hallucinations in which he saw faces imbedded in clothing and demon-like faces that would appear in curtain shades.

Design/Methods His pareidolia would be such that he would be looking at shadows on the walls or folds in clothing and see images within another. His fiancé, whom which he had been with for six years, also began to have pareidolia and these persisted more prevalently when she was with him.

Results Mental Status Examination: Feelings of unreality, blunted affect, disorganized and pressured speech, flight of ideas. Thought process: abnormal with circumstantiality

Conclusions Healthy pareidolia where images inside clouds or images of constellations and star formations is a zeitgeist of imagination which is more intense in some cultures than others. Folie á deux is a shared delusional disorder and folie imposée is a subtype when the dominant or principal person forms a delusion and imposes it onto the secondary or associate person. If folie imposée pareidolia is spread from one member of a couple to the other, it suggests that the second individual may be overly empathic to the first due to the dominating nature of the principal individual; the associate individual may be passive and submissive and thus accepting these visual perceptions more willingly. Alternatively, the associate individual could already have pareidolia of visual images which subliminally influenced the principal individual to have them, and can be misinterpreted as the opposite. It is unclear as to why it was this that transferred as opposed to the other delusions and further investigation in this realm is warranted.

Authors/Disclosures
Monica khokhar PRESENTER	No disclosure on file
Alan R. Hirsch, MD, FACP (Illinois Center for Neurologial and Behavioral Medicine, Ltd.)	Dr. Hirsch has nothing to disclose.

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