Hallucinations.

Abstract

Studies conducted at our Alzheimer Center in Cleveland, Ohio, along with those of other investigators, have documented that visual hallucinations occur with sufficient frequency in Alzheimer's disease and related dementias to warrant further investigation of their meaning and implications. The largest data set in which frequency of hallucinations among persons with Alzheimer's disease has been examined comes from a collaboration among the National Institute of Aging Alzheimer's Disease Cooperative Study (ADCS), the Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer's Disease (CERAD), and the Case Western Reserve University Alzheimer's Disease Research Center (ADRC). As a part of this collaboration, we examined data from 556 patients with Alzheimer's disease treated at medical centers across the United States who had been rated using the CERAD Behavior Rating Scale for Dementia (BRSD). The BRSD is a comprehensive, informant-based tool that includes several questions concerning the frequency with which hallucinations and misperceptions were experienced during the month before the interview.