“One day I saw how my sister’s books got bigger and how my father became as small as a doll. I feel my body grow and grow until it seems to occupy the entire room . ” These are some of the sensations that characterize the so-called ‘ Alice in Wonderland syndrome ‘, a rare clinical picture characterized by brief episodes of distortion in the body image, size, distance, shape or spatial relationships of objects . It usually affects children and adults with migraines, epilepsy, brain lesions, or viral infections. The syndrome owes its name to the homonymous work of the British writer Lewis Carroll , in which the young Alice sees her size change several times during her travels through magical worlds.
Galician researchers have studied an exceptional case of this neurological disorder in an eight-year-old girl who had never suffered from migraines . Her observations were published in the Journal of Neurology and she states that the girl suffered visual perception disorders every day for a month and with a frequency of two or three days in the following two weeks without having previously had headaches. The research was carried out by the team of María José Corral Caramés , lead author of the study and a pediatrician at the A Ponte Health Center (Orense).
Patients suffering from this syndrome perceive alterations in the shape, size and spatial situation of objects and the people around them, as well as distortion of their own body image and the passage of time. According to studies, patients are aware at all times that it is a transitory hallucination, but it is so intense that they tend to doubt reality or have to look in the mirror to check their size. This syndrome has also been associated with other visual illusions such as palinopsia (multiple images), achromatopsia (non-perception of color) and prosopagnosia (inability to recognize faces).
Although diagnostic tests have not yet identified any area of the brain that is specifically affected, the results of studies performed by CT scans in patients during their acute phase reveal areas of hypoperfusion in the vicinity of the visual tract and associated cortex. This fact could explain the visual hallucinations of the patients.
Scientists suspect that Charles Lutwidge Dofgson , known worldwide under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll and affected by migraines, may have suffered from this syndrome, so that Alice’s strange experiences during her journey through the rabbit hole were well known by your Creator.
