Charcot-Wilbrand syndrome

(CWS)

   Also known as defective revisualization and irreminiscence. The eponym Charcot-Wilbrand syndrome refers to the French neurologist JeanMartin Charcot (1825-1893) and the German neuro-ophthalmologist Hermann Wilbrand (1851-1935). It is used to denote a combination of visual agnosia (i.e. the inability to make sense of visual images and to revisualize images) and a reported global cessation of *dreaming. Etio-logically and pathophysiologically, CWS is associated primarily with deep bilateral lesions of the occipital lobe. The syndrome's conceptualization is based on two individual case reports, one by Charcot in 1883 and one by Wilbrand in 1887. Charcot's case report involves a person's acquired inability to consciously conjure up the visual mental images of dreams, in association with a deficit in revisualization during wake-fulness. Wilbrand's account involves a reported global cessation of dreaming, in association with prosopagnosia (i.e. 'face blindness') after infarction of the occipitotemporal region. Only a small number of reports on CWS can be found in the literature. In 2004 the Swiss neurologists Matthias Bischof and Claudio Bassetti reported a case of CWS in a 73-year-old woman who had suffered from acute, bilateral occipital artery infarction (including the right inferior lingual gyrus). Today the eponym CWS is generally used to denote any loss or reduction of dreaming or its imagery.

   References

   Bischof, M., Bassetti, C.L. (2004). Total dreamloss: A distinct neuropsychological dysfunction after bilateral PCA stroke. Annals of Neurology, 56, 583-586.

   Charcot, M. (1883). Un cas de suppression brusque et isolée de la vision mentale des signes et des objets (formes et couleurs). Progrès Médicale, 2, 568-571.

   Critchley, M. (1953). The parietal lobes. London: Edward Arnold & Co.

   Wilbrand, H. (1892). Ein Fall von Seelenblindheit und Hemianopsie mit Sectionsbefund. Deutsche Zeitschrift für die Nervenheilkunde,2, 361-387.