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Persistent psychogenic déjà vu: a case report

INTRODUCTION: Déjà vu is typically a transient mental state in which a novel experience feels highly familiar. Although extensively studied in relation to temporal lobe epilepsy as part of simple partial seizures, déjà vu has been less studied in other clinical populations. A recent review of tempor...

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Autores principales: Wells, Christine E, Moulin, Chris JA, Ethridge, Paige, Illman, Nathan A, Davies, Emma, Zeman, Adam
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4295571/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25482434
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1752-1947-8-414
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author Wells, Christine E
Moulin, Chris JA
Ethridge, Paige
Illman, Nathan A
Davies, Emma
Zeman, Adam
author_facet Wells, Christine E
Moulin, Chris JA
Ethridge, Paige
Illman, Nathan A
Davies, Emma
Zeman, Adam
author_sort Wells, Christine E
collection PubMed
description INTRODUCTION: Déjà vu is typically a transient mental state in which a novel experience feels highly familiar. Although extensively studied in relation to temporal lobe epilepsy as part of simple partial seizures, déjà vu has been less studied in other clinical populations. A recent review of temporal lobe epilepsy suggested a possible link between clinical levels of anxiety and debilitating déjà vu, indicating further research is required. Here, for the first time in the literature, we present a case study of a young man with anxiety and depersonalisation who reported experiencing persistent and debilitating déjà vu. This report therefore adds to the limited literature on the relationship between anxiety and déjà vu. CASE PRESENTATION: A 23-year-old White British man presented with a form of persistent déjà vu in 2010, approximately 3 years since symptom onset. He reported a history of anxiety and experiencing feelings of depersonalisation. Neurological assessment (electroencephalogram and magnetic resonance imaging) did not indicate any abnormalities. We assessed his recognition memory with a task used in patients with dementia who report similar experiences but lack awareness of their falseness. CONCLUSIONS: Our case’s memory performance was more conservative than controls but did not indicate a memory deficit. Unlike other patients with chronic déjà vu (for example, in dementia), he is fully aware of the false nature of his déjà vu and this presumably leads to his intact recognition memory performance. We suggest that his persistent déjà vu is psychogenic and conclude that déjà vu should be further studied in psychiatric disorders.
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spelling pubmed-42955712015-01-16 Persistent psychogenic déjà vu: a case report Wells, Christine E Moulin, Chris JA Ethridge, Paige Illman, Nathan A Davies, Emma Zeman, Adam J Med Case Rep Case Report INTRODUCTION: Déjà vu is typically a transient mental state in which a novel experience feels highly familiar. Although extensively studied in relation to temporal lobe epilepsy as part of simple partial seizures, déjà vu has been less studied in other clinical populations. A recent review of temporal lobe epilepsy suggested a possible link between clinical levels of anxiety and debilitating déjà vu, indicating further research is required. Here, for the first time in the literature, we present a case study of a young man with anxiety and depersonalisation who reported experiencing persistent and debilitating déjà vu. This report therefore adds to the limited literature on the relationship between anxiety and déjà vu. CASE PRESENTATION: A 23-year-old White British man presented with a form of persistent déjà vu in 2010, approximately 3 years since symptom onset. He reported a history of anxiety and experiencing feelings of depersonalisation. Neurological assessment (electroencephalogram and magnetic resonance imaging) did not indicate any abnormalities. We assessed his recognition memory with a task used in patients with dementia who report similar experiences but lack awareness of their falseness. CONCLUSIONS: Our case’s memory performance was more conservative than controls but did not indicate a memory deficit. Unlike other patients with chronic déjà vu (for example, in dementia), he is fully aware of the false nature of his déjà vu and this presumably leads to his intact recognition memory performance. We suggest that his persistent déjà vu is psychogenic and conclude that déjà vu should be further studied in psychiatric disorders. BioMed Central 2014-12-08 /pmc/articles/PMC4295571/ /pubmed/25482434 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1752-1947-8-414 Text en © Wells et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014 This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Case Report
Wells, Christine E
Moulin, Chris JA
Ethridge, Paige
Illman, Nathan A
Davies, Emma
Zeman, Adam
Persistent psychogenic déjà vu: a case report
title Persistent psychogenic déjà vu: a case report
title_full Persistent psychogenic déjà vu: a case report
title_fullStr Persistent psychogenic déjà vu: a case report
title_full_unstemmed Persistent psychogenic déjà vu: a case report
title_short Persistent psychogenic déjà vu: a case report
title_sort persistent psychogenic déjà vu: a case report
topic Case Report
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4295571/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25482434
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1752-1947-8-414
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