scholarly journals Musical hallucinations in elderly patients with visuospatial impairment: two case reports

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chiara Luppi ◽  
Francesca Santagata ◽  
Margherita Marchetti ◽  
Giuliana Bottignole ◽  
Pasqualina Sapone ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Positron Emission Tomography ◽  
White Matter ◽  
Case Reports ◽  
Temporal Cortex ◽  
Pharmacological Therapy ◽  
Auditory Hallucinations ◽  
Emission Tomography ◽  
Inferior Temporal Cortex ◽  
Vascular Events ◽  
Positron Emission

Musical hallucinations are an uncommon type of auditory hallucinations, they widely occur in elderly. Our group analyzed medical history, pharmacological therapy, neuropsychological pattern, audiometric testing, electroencephalogram, cerebral magnetic resonance and cerebral fludeoxyglucose-positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) of two patients. FDGPET showed in both patients hypometabolism pronounced in posterior regions. In particular the medial-inferior temporal cortex and the occipital associative areas were affected. Moreover, neuropsychological pattern suggested a visuospatial-executive deficit, conformed to the occipital involvement. Our reported cases might suggest that musical hallucinations have been arisen from a combination of peripheral and central dysfunction. A further explanation might be that musical hallucinations result from multiple white matter lacunar lesions due to small vascular events. A question is whether musical hallucinations might be primarily associated with occipital areas hypometabolism and visuospatial alterations typically associated with Levy body dementia (LBD).

scholarly journals Quantitative Measurement of Cerebral Acetylcholinesterase Using [11C]physostigmine and Positron Emission Tomography

2001 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 114-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gunnar Blomqvist ◽  
Bertrand Tavitian ◽  
Sabina Pappata ◽  
Christian Crouzel ◽  
Antoinette Jobert ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Positron Emission Tomography ◽  
White Matter ◽  
Good Description ◽  
Acetylcholinesterase Inhibitor ◽  
Emission Tomography ◽  
Late Time ◽  
Reference Tissue ◽  
Positron Emission ◽  
Simplified Reference Tissue Model

[11C]physostigmine, an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor, has been shown to be a promising positron emission tomography ligand to quantify the cerebral concentration of the enzyme in animals and humans in vivo. Here, a quantitative and noninvasive method to measure the regional acetylcholinesterase concentration in the brain is presented. The method is based on the observation that the ratio between regions rich in acetylcholinesterase and white matter, a region almost entirely deprived of this enzyme, was found to become approximately constant after 20 to 30 minutes, suggesting that at late time points the uptake mainly contains information about the distribution volume. Taking the white matter as the reference region, a simplified reference tissue model, with effectively one reversible tissue compartment and three parameters, was found to give a good description of the data in baboons. One of these parameters, the ratio between the total distribution volumes in the target and reference regions, showed a satisfactory correlation with the acetylcholinesterase concentration measured postmortem in two baboon brains. Eight healthy male subjects were also analyzed and the regional enzyme concentrations obtained again showed a good correlation with the known acetylcholinesterase concentrations measured in postmortem studies of human brain.

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