
The common symptoms of LBD include:
Cognitive symptoms (thinking): attention, alertness and visual processing may be affected in the following ways:
- Becoming slower to respond
- Problems with concentrating and staying alert
- Visual problems such as difficulty reading clocks
- Difficulty with judging distances
- Struggling with planning and organising
- Difficulty with day-to-day memory
- Fluctuations in thinking and memory abilities – with difficulties varying from day to day or even hour to hour
Motor symptoms (movement): movement can be affected in similar ways to those in Parkinson’s disease:
- Movements may become slower, or more stiff
- Facial expressions can be blank
- Limbs may shake (tremors)
- More prone to falls
Visual hallucinations (seeing things that are not really there):
- Mistaking a coat for a person
- Imagining seeing detailed forms of people or animals
These hallucinations, often of animals or people, may seem real to the person living with LBD and can sometimes be distressing. Hallucinations can improve with adjustments to medications. However, it is advised that people discuss this with a specialist in case the treatments they are taking are triggering or making their hallucinations worse. For many though, these are not generally troublesome and would only need treatment if they became distressing.
People with LBD can also experience auditory hallucinations (such as hearing things that are not real). However, this is less common. They can also sometimes experience delusions, which means that they believe ideas which are not true.