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May 4, 2012
Q. A friend of ours recently reported this strange one: “My 90-year-old mother called to announce that her houseplants were growing bigger right before her eyes, with the stems and leaves taking over her entire living room. She knew that couldn't happen but there it was. Was this the onset of mental illness?”
A. Not at all, doctors soon reassured them. Such hallucinations — known as Charles Bonnet syndrome after the 18th-century philosopher who first described it — are actually surprisingly common among people like our friend's elderly mother, with significant vision loss. Images of colored patterns or people's faces are most frequent, followed by animals, plants, inanimate objects, and are sometimes characterized as mental “movies,” though devoid of sounds, odors and emotional impact.
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