Visual disturbances are disturbances of visual perception that occur without the existence of the hallucinated object.

These transcend by the conviction of absolute reality and occur in the context of various pathologies.

For the most part, visual hallucinations are organic.
Visual hallucinations can be:

– Simple (e.g., flashes of light, colored spots).

– Complex (e.g. animals, people, landscapes).
May originate in the visual cerebral cortex and association areas.

The responsible causes are broad, including withdrawal syndromes (e.g. alcohol), drugs, toxicants, metabolic disorders, structural brain diseases and degenerative brain diseases (e.g. dementia with Lewy bodies, Alzheimer’s disease).

In older people, visual hallucinations associated with a bilateral visual deficit may appear, unrelated to any specific pathology, such as Charles Bonnet syndrome.