A 44-year-old woman started to ask whether her family had attended her funeral; since she thought she had died, she told her husband to marry another woman

Cotard syndrome in anti-NMDAR encephalitis: two patients and insights from molecular imaging. J Ramirez Bermudez et al. The Neural Basis of Cognition, Jan 4 2021. https://doi.org/10.1080/13554794.2020.1866018

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1346129241281339398

Abstract: Cotard syndrome is a clinical condition defined by the presence of nihilistic delusions. We report two patients with Cotard syndrome in whom anti-NMDAR encephalitis (ANMDARE) was confirmed. Both cases showed features of affective psychosis, developed catatonic syndrome, and worsened after the use of antipsychotics. 18F-FDG PET brain studies showed a bilateral hemispheric pattern of hypometabolism in posterior regions, mainly in the cingulate cortex and in the medial aspects of parietal and occipital lobes. A more severe hypometabolism was observed in the right hemisphere of both patients. Both cases remitted with the use of specific immunotherapy for ANMDARE.

KEYWORDS: Cotard syndromenihilistic delusionsanti-NMDAR encephalitisautoimmune encephalitismolecular imaging