Those who suffer from the so-called ‘Alice in Wonderland syndrome’ are suddenly immersed in a magical and strange world. It is a neuropsychological disorder that affects the sense of vision, touch, hearing or the perception of time and space, among more than 40 other distortions that characterize this alteration of the senses.
“I got up, bent down to pick up the TV remote control from the floor and felt my foot sink into the floor. As I looked down, I saw that my leg was sinking into the carpet.(…) The floors curved or sloped, and when I tried to walk on them, it seemed like I was wobbling on sponges. When I lay in bed and looked at my hands, my fingers stretched half a mile into the distance. (…) Walking down the street, the parked cars seemed the size of a puppy, and I felt disproportionately tall. At work, my chair seemed enormous, while I seemed to have shrunk. Seeing the world through a fisheye lens made everyday life very difficult for me. I was unable to judge distances accurately, I often moved clumsily or overcompensated,” says one person affected by this syndrome in The Guardian.
This experience would be comparable to that of the protagonist of the famous work Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, when she perceived that “either the locks were too big, or the key was too small”, or when it becomes so big. that doesn’t fit in the room. Her symptoms are so similar that this rare syndrome was named after her.
“The ‘Alice in Wonderland syndrome’ (APPS) was first described in 1952 by C.W. Lippmann. In the original publication Lippman talked about a patient who felt that his ear had swollen and bulged 20 centimeters and another who felt that his body was divided in two by a vertical line and that the right side was twice as big as the left. ” explains José Ramón Alonso, neuroscientist and professor at the University of Salamanca.
It looks like a special effects thing. Simple but disturbing, like the first ones designed by Georges Méliès. But in reality they are neuropsychological effects that some people experience without the need for magic or camera tricks.
Among the most common symptoms of this syndrome are “distortion of body image (metamorphosis), of the entire body or especially of the hands and head, with an increase in the size of these parts of the body (macrosomatognosia) being more common than a decrease ( microsomatognosia) that also appears in some cases,” says Alonso.
The size of things and oneself have a great role, as occurs in the story of Alice, since micropsia and macropsia are also experienced, which is when “objects appear to be much smaller or larger than they really are.” details the neuroscientist.
Of the more than 40 distortions described, many are visual in nature even though nothing happens to the patient’s vision, such as seeing multiple images, losing stereoscopic vision or inability to recognize faces.
Time and space can also be distorted; Distances can seem miles or very close and events can occur in slow motion or at breakneck speed.
“With regard to the causes of ‘Alice in Wonderland syndrome’, in a Spanish study detailing 20 cases, almost half, nine, were infectious (five associated with the Epstein-Barr virus), migraine in eight, drug use in two and epilepsy in one,” summarizes Alonso.
According to Jan Dirk Blom’s research Alice in Wonderland Syndrome: A Systematic Review, which summarizes results from 169 patients, “among young people, the most frequently described condition was encephalitis (21.7% vs. 1.2% among adults and elderly patients), with the Epstein-Barr virus being the most frequently reported pathogen (68.4% of all encephalitis cases). Among the group of adults and elderly patients, neurological disorders were described more frequently (16.8%); Of all these disorders, migraine was the most prevalent condition (9.6%).”
“It is a benign process with spontaneous resolution, that is, it disappears after a few days and without recurrence in most cases,” reassures the neuroscientist consulted by La Vanguardia.
According to research, which is not yet very advanced despite more than 70 years since its description because it is a rare syndrome, it occurs mostly in children, for whom the symptoms go away once they mature. In addition, it is associated with migraines and Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection, as published in the research Alice in Wonderland Syndrome and Epstein-Barr virus infection in the Association’s official journal. Spanish Primary Care Pediatrics.
Imagine that you are at work and suddenly the computer becomes gigantic, you look around and it may not be big, but very small, since your chair seems to be meters high. You get up to go to the bathroom to splash water on your face and the door suddenly moves away, the hallway is so long that you can barely see the end, the tiles are curved and the walls seem to form a dome above your head. You manage to get out to get some air and go to pick up the phone, but your hand is huge, the cars look like toys and the ambient noise sounds like music to you. This is one of the strange, magical and implausible worlds in which someone suffering from ‘Alice in Wonderland syndrome’ could be immersed, but they are not properly hallucinations because those who feel it are perfectly aware that what they experience It’s not real.
“I’m afraid I can’t explain it more clearly,” Alice replied very politely, “because, to begin with, I don’t even understand it myself; and changing size so many times in a single day is very disconcerting…”, says Alice to the caterpillar in the famous novel, words that can well summarize what it feels like to suffer from this syndrome that it is suspected that Lewis Carroll may have experienced; because of the great coincidence in the descriptions of his world, so particular to him, and because it is known that he suffered from migraines, which are associated with the syndrome. However, there is no reliable evidence that this was the case.