After death experiences in patients with Parkinson’s disease

Hallucinations are common in Parkinson’s disease (PD), with presence hallucinations (PH), reported as the sensation that someone is close to you, being the most frequent. Some PD patients report PH involving deceased loved ones, known outside the context of PD as grief or bereavement hallucinations, and which we refer to as “after death experiences” (ADEs). This study explores the phenomenology of ADEs in six PD patients through in-depth interviews, focusing on how these experiences appear and are emotionally and cognitively processed. While sharing features with bereavement hallucinations in the general population, ADEs in PD are distinct in their frequency and persistence. This recurrence offers a unique window into how individuals interpret repeated ADEs. We found that patients used both rational and reflective language to make sense of these experiences, indicating that these ADEs may be a low-level perceptual experience meeting a high-level meaning-making scaffold. These findings have implications not only for understanding ADEs in PD, but also for broader cognitive studies, offering insights into the social-cognitive mechanisms behind hallucinatory phenomena.