What is Alice's syndrome in Wonderland

Today we will talk about micro- or macro-infections, as they call a strange and rather rare disease in medicine - "Alice's syndrome in Wonderland". As a rule, it is characterized as a neurological condition, in which human perception of reality is violated.

A person with a microscope sees the objects surrounding him or parts of his body disproportionately small or, on the contrary, huge (macropsia), losing the ability to understand their true dimensions. The temporal and spatial orientation is radically violated.

How Alisa's syndrome occurs in Wonderland

What exactly causes the human brain to react so bizarrely to visual images is still not clear. The appearance of the syndrome is associated with a hereditary predisposition to migraines. It is also believed that this disease can be one of the manifestations of a complex form of epilepsy, a consequence of fever, mononucleosis, brain tumors, and, of course, caused by the action of psychotropic substances and drugs.

Previously, it was believed that such neurologic changes can arise, mainly as a result of brain damage in the parietal region.

How is Alice's syndrome manifested in Wonderland?

It should be noted that in patients with micro-eye, as a rule, the eyes are not damaged, and the originators of bizarre "hallucinations" are only changes in the psyche that cause both visual, auditory, and even tactile images to be distorted. So, for example, an ordinary spoon can suddenly grow up to the size of a shovel, and a sofa become so tiny that it is simply scary to sit on it - you can crush it. Syndrome Alice will forcefully circumvent the pebble on the road - because it is the size of a mountain!

The patients described that their own fingers seemed to be a meter in length, and the floor suddenly became wavy, and the legs were "tied" in it, as in soft clay. In addition, they thought that the trees outside the window are next to each other and you can examine each sheet on them in detail.

Such seizures last for several minutes, and sometimes even weeks, causing a panic condition. Fortunately, like the fairy-tale Alice, the patients return to the real world, as the attacks on them gradually become more rare and less pronounced, and eventually disappear altogether.

How Alice's syndrome was discovered in Wonderland

The name of the syndrome was given in 1952 by Dr. Lipman, in the journal On Mental Diseases. There he published an article "Hallucinations inherent in migraines," in which he described the syndrome in detail, linking it with the sensations of the heroine of the famous fairy tale by Lewis Carroll.

If you remember, it was so strange and inexplicably seen all around herself Alice in a wonderful world. The syndrome confuses patients, destroying the logical relationship between the size and shape of objects. There is a suspicion that the author of the marvelous fairy tale, a professor of mathematics at Oxford University, suffered from a seizure of a microscope.

A little later, more precisely and in detail the disease was described by the Canadian psychiatrist John Todd (1955), trying to understand the reasons for the appearance of this syndrome. And now a microprint in his honor is also called Todd's syndrome.