Un síntoma cuasi parapsicológico: palinopsia

La parapsicologia se refiere al estudio de ciertos tipos de fenomenos paranormales. Paranormal conciernea una experiencia que no parece ser explicable en terminos del conocimiento cientifico o de nuestra comprension de hechos cotidianos. La realidad cientifica del fenomeno parapsicologico y la validez cientifica de sus investigaciones, a menudo son areas de frecuente disputa y critica. Hasta ahora la psicologia formal la caracteriza como una pseudociencia. La palinopsia es un raro sintoma caracterizado por el fenomeno ilusorio de perseveracion y/o recurrencia de imagenes visuales luego de haber sido removido el estimulo excitatorio. Es una distorsion del procesamiento de imagenes en el sistema visual causado por lesiones unilaterales o bilaterales de variado origen que afectan las areas posteriores de los hemisferios cerebrales, toxicidad o efectos colaterales de drogas terapeuticas, una extensa lista de condiciones miscelaneas y aun en sujetos normales. A despecho de su rareza, existe abundante literatura al respecto posiblemente por su caracter intrigante o por su naturaleza pseudo-parapsicologica. Los autores presentan los casos de 6 pacientes, dos de los cuales estaban recibiendo tamoxifeno, una droga hasta el presente no reconocida como causa de este fenomeno Parapsychology is the scientific study of certain types of paranormal phenomena. The “paranormal” (beside or beyond the normal) refers to unusual experiences that do not seem to be explainable in terms of our everyday understanding or known scientific principles. The scientificreality of parapsychological phenomena and the validity of scientific parapsychological research is amatter of frequent dispute and criticism. The field is regarded by some critics as a pseudoscience. Palinopsia is a rare symptom characterized by the illusory phenomenon of perseverance or recurrence of visual images after removal of the exciting stimulus. It is a distortion of the processing in the visual system caused by unilateral o bilateral lesions of various kinds, such as toxicity or side effects of drugs, as well as an array of miscellaneous conditions, that affect posterior areas of the cerebral hemispheres in normal subjects. Despite its rarity, there is abundance of literature on the subject, possibly because of the intriguing, quasiparapsychologic nature of the symptom. Six patients were identified with the diagnosis of palinopsia o poliopsia of whom two were taking the drug tamoxifen not previously described in the literature