Two samples of patients suffering from senile dementia were administered the Kew tests for parietal lobe function and aphasia. No evidence emerged of any clinical heterogeneity; parietal lobe test performance was found to be more a function of degree of impairment rather than of age.

A patient developed Capgras' syndrome as part of an interictal psychosis of epilepsy; magnetic resonance imaging revealed bilateral subcortical lesions in occipitotemporal and frontal regions. These findings have implications for the postulated association between Capgras' syndrome and neuropsychological deficits, in particular prosopagnosia.

Fifty cases attending a walk-in psychiatric emergency clinic with alcohol-related problems were studied retrospectively. Results confirm that this group represents a sizeable load on the clinic – about 15% of all assessments. Other psychiatric problems were common, and many patients had recently attempted or threatened suicide.

Patients with late paraphrenia were typed for HLA-A, -B and -C. Increased frequencies of BW55 (P= 0.036), B37 (P= 0.008) and CW6 (P=0.056) were found relative to controls. Unlike findings in paranoid schizophrenia, there was no HLAA9 association, suggesting that paraphrenics may be genetically distinct from schizophrenics. The primary association seems to be with B37, which has the lowest corrected P value and highest relative risk; if this were replicated, it would make possession of this antigen a strong risk factor for developing the disorder.

Extrapyramidal symptoms, including oculogyric crisis, are well recognised side-effects of clopenthixol medication, but precipitation of prolonged oculogyric crisis on addition of nifedipine to an ongoing clopenthixol regime has not so far been reported.