Pop-out illusion as the initial presentation of posterior cortical atrophy

ABSTRACT

Posterior cortical atrophy is a rare neurodegenerative disease that presents with progressive higher-order visual impairment. We describe a case of posterior cortical atrophy in a 62-year-old, right-handed man, who initially presented with difficulty in viewing the television screen, followed by reading difficulty a few months later, and then developed features of Balint’s syndrome over the course of 3 years. We report an illusion, which we noticed at the time of the initial presentation, where the characters in the television appeared to be popping out of the screen. We describe this as the “pop-out illusion”.

KEYWORDS:

• Posterior cortical atrophy
• pop-out illusion

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).