One of the central debates concerning delusion has to do with the role played by faulty hypothesis formation and other cognitive errors. Top-down models assign causal power to such errors in generating delusions, whereas bottom-up models regard these same cognitive errors as at least secondary to (and in some cases derivative from) the delusional experience. We support a bottom-up model of delu...

This case report describes Capgras delusion occurring in a previously well 63 year old woman following correction of severe hyponatraemia. It raises interesting points of discussion around etiological models to explain Capgras delusion and the neuropsychiatric complications associated with the correction of severe hyponatraemia (German J Psychiatry 2010; 13 (4): 175-177).

Young and colleagues (e.g. Young, A. W., & Leafhead, K. M. (1996). Betwixt life and death: case studies of the Cotard delusion. In P. W. Halligan & J. C. Marshall (Eds.), Method in madness: Case studies in cognitive neuropsychiatry. Mahway, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.) have suggested that cases of the Cotard delusion (the belief that one is dead) result when a particular perceptual anomaly...

The inheritance of Olmsted syndrome that is a very rare congenital with transgredient palmoplantar keratoderma is distinguished by the presence of massive hyperkeratosis with fissured skin and periorificial chaps. It usually appears during the early life and mostly in male pateints. Herein we report a case of Olmsted syndrome which is associated with ichthyosis and somatic type of delusion duri...

Delusional disorder, once termed paranoia, was an important diagnosis in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Subsequently it was subsumed with schizophrenia, and only in 1987 was it reintroduced into modern psychiatric diagnosis. This book aims to reconcile recent knowledge with older ideas about the condition, and thereby to provide a contemporary perspective to the concept of d...