Question: What is the most unusual case that you have come across in psychology?

Jen Todd Jones answered on 15 Mar 2013:

During my degree I was lucky enough to work with lots of interesting patients with brain damage, including the gentleman I worked with to write my thesis (or big report)! But I think the most interesting case we saw was a man who suffered from ‘palinopsia’ which has only been reported 5 or 6 times in the world!

The patient we worked with had had a stroke, and afterwards suffered from palinopsia, but his was mostly for moving visual objects. When he watched television he would sometimes see images move onto other images in an entirely different program, so when he watched Meerkat manor on BBC and then Eastenders, all of the actors would have meerkat heads and talk to each other with London accents!!

Palinopsia happens because of damage to the back of the brain where seeing and paying attention happen, the word comes from old Greek words like ‘palin’ meaning again and ‘opsia’ meaning seeing. This means exactly what it says, seeing again, or after images – like sometimes when you stare at lights for too long and you look away and you can still see them? But for patients with palinopsia it happens all of the time, and sometimes the images even move.