Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Hemiprosopometamorphopsia: a Case of Impaired Facial Perception Restricted to the Eye

  • Medicine
  • Published:
SN Comprehensive Clinical Medicine Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Prosopometamorphopsia is a rare condition of perceptual facial distortion, with no impairment in facial recognition. We report a case of hemiprosopometamorphopsia restricted only to the eye. A 42-year-old male pilot presented with an acute onset visual disturbance consistent with hemiprosopometamorphopsia. While looking at faces, he observed a distorted image with the left eye appearing lower than the right. Faces resembled the paintings of Picasso. He had preserved insight and could recognize faces. Neurological and ophthalmological examination revealed no abnormalities. A brain MRI performed on day 3 of symptom onset demonstrated an area of acute infarct in the right occipital lobe involving the right posterior cerebral artery territory. Carotid CT angiogram and circle of Willis were unremarkable. Further workup did not reveal an underlying cause. Secondary stroke prevention with aspirin and statin was initiated. An event recorder was implanted. He was discharged on day 8 with near complete resolution of presenting symptom. While various facial distortions have been reported from prosopometamorphopsia, our case was restricted to only the eye and could have been easily overlooked or misdiagnosed as a migraine phenomenon. In patients presenting with perceptual facial distortion, clinicians should consider the possibility of stroke.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Schroeder C, Schneider-Gold C, Behrendt V, Grüter T, Lukas C, Gold R, et al. Unilateral right prosopometamorphopsia with positive “half-face-covering-test” after small occipitotemporal stroke. J Neurol Sci. 2017;379:247–8.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Blom JD, Sommer IEC, Koops S, Sacks OW. Prosopometamorphopsia and facial hallucinations. Lancet. 2014;384(9958):1998.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Ffytche DH, Blom JD, Catani M. Disorders of visual perception. J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry. 2010;81(11):1280–7.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Miwa H, Kondo T. Metamorphopsia restricted to the right side of the face associated with a right temporal lobe lesion. J Neurol. 2007;254(12):1765–7.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Funatsu N, Hayakawa M, Tokuda N, Toyoda K. Transient prosopometamorphopsia restricted to the left eye caused by ischemia at the right splenium of the corpus callosum. Intern Med. 2017;56(21):2933–5.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Barghouthi T, El Husseini N. Prosopometamorphopsia secondary to a left splenium of the corpus callosum infarct. BMJ Case Rep. 2018;2018.

  7. Gschwind M, Pourtois G, Schwartz S, Van De Ville D, Vuilleumier P. White-matter connectivity between face-responsive regions in the human brain. Cereb Cortex. 2012;22(7):1564–76.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Cho J-Y, Moon SY, Hong K-S, Cho Y-J, Kim S-C, Hwang S-I, et al. Unilateral prosopometamorphopsia as a dominant hemisphere-specific disconnection sign. Neurology. 2011;76(22):e110.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neurology & Neurophysiology, Liverpool Hospital, Elizabeth and Goulburn St, Liverpool, NSW, 2170, Australia

    Chun Seng Phua, Sonu Bhaskar & Zeljka Calic

  2. School of Medicine, The University of New South Wales, South West Sydney Clinical School, Sydney, NSW, 2170, Australia

    Chun Seng Phua, Sonu Bhaskar & Zeljka Calic

  3. Stroke and Neurology Research Group, Ingham Institute for Applied Medical Research, Liverpool, NSW, 2170, Australia

    Sonu Bhaskar & Zeljka Calic

Authors
  1. Chun Seng Phua
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Sonu Bhaskar
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Zeljka Calic
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Literature search was performed by all authors. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Dr Chun Seng Phua, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Chun Seng Phua.

Ethics declarations

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Standards

All human and animal studies have been approved by the appropriate ethics committee and have therefore been performed in accordance with the ethical standards laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments.

Informed Consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Additional information

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

This article is part of the Topical Collection on Medicine

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Phua, C.S., Bhaskar, S. & Calic, Z. Hemiprosopometamorphopsia: a Case of Impaired Facial Perception Restricted to the Eye. SN Compr. Clin. Med. 1, 931–933 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42399-019-00161-7

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42399-019-00161-7

Keywords

Search

Navigation