Journal Article

The Pareidolia Test: A Simple Neuropsychological Test Measuring Visual Hallucination-Like Illusions

Kamimura, Naoto, Kanno, Shigenori, Yokoi, Kayoko, Uchiyama, Makoto, Kazui, Hiroaki, Mori, Etsuro, Ikeda, Manabu, Takeshita, Chieko, Iizuka, Osamu, Watanabe, Hiroyuki, Mamiya, Yasuyuki, Shimomura, Tatsuo, Hashimoto, Mamoru, Baba, Toru, Nishio, Yoshiyuki

2016

Overview

Visual hallucinations are a core clinical feature of dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), and this symptom is important in the differential diagnosis and prediction of treatment response. The pareidolia test is a tool that evokes visual hallucination-like illusions, and these illusions may be a surrogate marker of visual hallucinations in DLB. We created a simplified version of the pareidolia test and examined its validity and reliability to establish the clinical utility of this test. The pareidolia test was administered to 52 patients with DLB, 52 patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and 20 healthy controls (HCs). We assessed the test-retest/inter-rater reliability using the intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) and the concurrent validity using the Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI) hallucinations score as a reference. A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was used to evaluate the sensitivity and specificity of the pareidolia test to differentiate DLB from AD and HCs. The pareidolia test required approximately 15 minutes to administer, exhibited good test-retest/inter-rater reliability (ICC of 0.82), and moderately correlated with the NPI hallucinations score (rs = 0.42). Using an optimal cut-off score set according to the ROC analysis, and the pareidolia test differentiated DLB from AD with a sensitivity of 81% and a specificity of 92%. Our study suggests that the simplified version of the pareidolia test is a valid and reliable surrogate marker of visual hallucinations in DLB.

• Publisher: Public Library of Science,Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subject: Age / Aged / Alzheimer's disease / Alzheimers disease / Behavior / Biology and Life Sciences / Care and treatment / Case-Control Studies / Complications and side effects / Correlation coefficient / Correlation coefficients / Dementia / Dementia - diagnosis / Dementia disorders / Demography / Diagnosis / Differential diagnosis / Disease control / Female / Hallucinations / Hallucinations - psychology / Humans / Illusions / Illusions - psychology / Lewy bodies / Lewy Body Disease - diagnosis / Life sciences / Male / Medicine / Medicine and Health Sciences / Neurodegenerative diseases / Neurology / Neuropsychological Tests / Neurosciences / Noise / Patients / Psychiatry / Psychological tests / Rehabilitation / Reliability analysis / Reproducibility of Results / Risk factors / ROC Curve / Sensitivity / Sensitivity analysis / Social Sciences / Studies / Test procedures / Visual perception