Delusional Misidentification Incident in a Right Hemisphere Stroke Patient

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Young, Andrew W. | Flude, Brenda M. | Ellis, Andrew W.

Affiliations: Department of Psychology, University of Durham, Durham DH1 3LE, UK | Department of Psychology, University of Lancaster | Department of Psychology, University of York

Abstract: We report a delusional misidentification incident lasting some hours in which a man who had suffered a right hemisphere stroke, HW, mistook a student for his daughter. Investigation of HW's face processing abilities showed unimpaired ability to recognize familiar faces and match facial expressions, but severe impairments of unfamiliar face matching both on the Benton test and a task requiring the matching of disguised and undisguised faces. The incident shows some similarity to the Frégoli delusion, which has also been noted following brain injury affecting the right cerebral hemisphere.

DOI: 10.3233/BEN-1991-4204

Journal: Behavioural Neurology, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 81-87, 1991