Delirium

Factual Questions
1

Recently a friend’s husband got a high fever and started talking deliriously. Before she could get him to the doctor he started calling her by another woman’s name. This has caused some bad feelings between them but I think you can’t hold what a person says while delirious against him.

I had a fever delirium when I was a child and don’t remember much if any of what I said. So 2 things -

  1. What causes deirium? Heat misfiring the nbeurons?
  2. When a person talks in this state, is it more like a dream - some random memory or subconscious?

I’m thinking he could have been calling her the name if his 3rd grade teacher or something…

2

Aah, those misfiring “nbeurons”. Happens to me all the time and I’m not running a fever.

Addressing the 2nd point more (and the husband’s problem), when memory starts to go, it’s in reverse chronological order. The earliest memories are the last to go. Presumably in delirium, really old bits of cruft are probably more likely to be recovered than newer stuff. The wife has absolutely nothing to worry about. Similar stuff happens to Alzheimers patients. They confuse people they know with friends/family from childhood.