I thought I read somewhere that delusions and hallucinations were connected. But I guess hallucinations fade away faster? I understand it is the nature of a delusion to stick around. Mom won't give up her long-held beliefs:1. She's being filmed.2. Her neighbors are being attacked.3. Her siblings are plotting against her.4. The building she is in changes itself physically. Etc, etc. There are lots of delusions, mostly normal for dementia from what I've read.
However, she forgets about her hallucinations. I don't remind her of them, I prefer to let them go on by. But this evening she was in one of her lucid moments, trying to understand her condition and asking about symptoms, so I told her she had hallucinated people arguing in her former kitchen. She said, "I did??? When???" She has no memory of those events that were so traumatic to her that she mobilized her whole family and security people. Then I asked, "Do you ever imagine you see things now?"She said, "Yes. There are three faces in the window. They're plastic. They don't move."Then she told me everything she ate in the dining room this week, and every craft activity they had, remembering it all correctly. She recognizes all her caregivers at the MCF.
I'll go see her again in 3 days, and she might be looking up at the ceiling and conversing out loud with imaginary voices during our whole visit, like she's in a trance. I'm used to it. I'll smile and read a book or try to get her to look at a puzzle.
I'm glad she forgets the hallucinations. I wish they'd take the delusions away with them!
The brain is amazingly weird.
Delusions are often linked to the frontal lobe, especially the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, while hallucinations are more associated with the temporal lobe, particularly the superior temporal gyrus.
My brother, with Lewy's Dementia, remembered his hallucinations ABSOLUTELY and down to fine detail. However, he had TWO different types:
1. Hallucinations brought on by stress or excitement (going out for lunch qualified). They began with seeing usually a patterned area such as marbled wall, intricately designed hotel carpeting, etc. These were usually scary hallucinations in which he would gag, go kind of frozen deer-in-headlights a minute, recover. And when he came out of them he'd just say "Crazy. Monsters. Not real". He didn't remember them long.
2. The second hallucinations came on usually at night, usually on getting up to go to the bathroom. He would see them and describe them and remember them down to the most meticulous detail. One I remember was an immigrant woman, dressed in woolen brown robes almost like a monk would wear. "She was huddling in my Corner with her babe in her arms, trying to protect it from us. When I touched her she disappeared". One involved a garden party around his pool outside his window. Everyone clearly from the 60s judged by how they dressed. A guy with white shorts and no top. Had a white 'towel around his neck. Had black hair slicked back in a sort of 'Elvis-cut'. Everyone had cocktails. And on and on and on.
He didn't have a pool outside his window.
My brother could go on endlessly about his Lewy's. He would have been a marvelous test subject. He died about one and one half year after diagnosis (which had been his hope) so he didn't have to experience the sad middle and end stages.
The brain is a mystery and that's for CERTAIN.