Alice in Wonderland Syndrome

[Roy Batty]

http://aiws.info/

The most prominent and often most disturbing symptom is that of altered body image: the sufferer will find that they are confused as to the size and shape of parts of (or all of) their body. The parts usually mentioned are the head and hands; growth seems more usual than shrinkage. This phenomenon seems to have the medical term 'metamorphosis'.
The second major symptom is the distortion of visual perception. The eyes themselves are normal, but the sufferer 'sees' objects with the wrong size or shape and/or finds that perspective is incorrect. This can mean that people, cars, buildings, etc. look smaller or larger than they should be, or that distances look incorrect; for example a corridor may appear to be very long, or the ground may appear too close.
Other symptoms which have been referred to as part of AIWS include:

• Distorted time perception; time moving quickly or slowly.
• Distorted touch perception, e.g. a feeling that the ground is 'spongy' under the feet or that the sensation received from touching something is simply incorrect or unrecognised.
• Distorted sound perception.

I used to experience this as a child. Thoughts? Has anybody ever heard of this before?

[Valentin the II]

Tripy.

[Lunar4]

Sounds like an Acid trip.

[Spurius]

"When I was I child
I had a fever
My hands felt like
two balloons"

Not so uncommon as you think. I remember dreaming once when I was younger that I was walking on normal ground, but it was like walking on pillows. If you have a fever, your sense of touch, and taste/smell can be affected as well.

[Juvenal]

"When I was I child
I had a fever
My hands felt like
two balloons"

That sounds like Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" from The Wall. I can't read it without the hearing the cadence of Roger Waters(?) singing it at the back of my mind.

...we're all borderline synesthetics ...

Yes, I strongly agree with this. My childhood memories are full of strong cross-sense associations (although this dropped off sharpely in my teens). I felt that primary colours were so strong that they gave objects a personality with associated taste, smell and texture.
I particularly remember that when making up games with die-cast toy cars, the colours were so important that if I repainted a car, it felt completely different emotionally.
In those days, if someone asked me what was my favourite colour, I felt as if I had invested a substantial part of my soul and general outlook on the world into my answer.

[Spurius]

That sounds like Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" from The Wall. I can't read it without the hearing the cadence of Roger Waters(?) singing it at the back of my mind.

Yes, I strongly agree with this. My childhood memories are full of strong cross-sense associations (although this dropped off sharpely in my teens). I felt that primary colours were so strong that they gave objects a personality with associated taste, smell and texture.
I particularly remember that when making up games with die-cast toy cars, the colours were so important that if I repainted a car, it felt completely different emotionally.
In those days, if someone asked me what was my favourite colour, I felt as if I had invested a substantial part of my soul and general outlook on the world into my answer.

Yeah, with a typo, but it's indeed PF. Instant rapport, those lines.

I think most people have such memories (I have), but most will not know exactly what to do with it, feel somewhat uncomfortable, and it gets shoved under later in life, forgotten. A bit of a shame.

[The Fish]

This is generally thought to be a manifestation of aura, a neurological presentation seen with migraine headaches. Changes in sensorium are common with aura, including flashing lights and other visual field changes. Often times these aren't even accompanied by pain. Some people also think that TIAs (transient ischemic attacks), which are kind of like little mini-strokes in which people temporarily lose control of speech or limb control, may actually be further manifestations of migraine headaches without pain. This particular syndrome appears to be a rare presentation of aura, which is really indicative of how little we really know about migraines.

[Spurius]

Plus, we're all borderline synesthetics by how we're made - in some cases the neural paths get mixed on purpose, even. It's all just tightly separated in our normal conscience, but just under the surface we all have it - we all know what a 'warm' colour is, or a 'woolly' sound.

[rathelios]

Body image is created in your head. Perception of everything is created in your head if you think about it.
If you happen to have access to a vibrator (I'm not asking so please don't tell) you can create this illusion for yourself.

The Pinocchio illusion is an illusion that one's nose is growing longer, as happened to the literary character, Pinocchio when he told a lie. It is an illusion of proprioception, reviewed by Lackner (1988).
To experience the illusion, a vibrator is applied to the biceps tendon while one holds one's nose with the hand of that arm. The vibrator stimulates muscle spindles in the biceps that would normally be stimulated by the muscle's stretching, creating a kinaesthetic illusion that the arm is moving away from the face. Because the fingers holding the nose are still giving tactile information of being in contact with the nose, it appears that the nose is moving away from the face too, in a form of perceptual capture.
The illusion involves activity in the parietal cortex of the brain responsible for integrating information from different parts of the body (e.g, Ehrsson, Kito, Sadato, Passingham, & Naito, 2005). Distortions of the size of parts of the body can sometimes occur spontaneously or during epilepsy or migraine auras.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinocchio_illusion

[Roy Batty]

Spinal taps, the inevitable result of a child telling his mother he has pins in his swollen hands, that the tv is a thousand miles away and that the walls were closing in, crushingly... Spinal taps simply are not fun. Those days stand out as the most horrific of my life. How can I put into words just how utterly incorrect and wrong everything seemed?

[Ummon]

Distorted time perception; time moving quickly or slowly.
Distorted touch perception, e.g. a feeling that the ground is 'spongy' under the feet or that the sensation received from touching something is simply incorrect or unrecognised.
Distorted sound perception.

That adds:

1) internal clocks.
2) primal somatosensory areas.
3) temporal auditory cortex.

That might be useful in tracing some pacemakers, I wonder. I can seem to remember an article the other day about neuron populations producing base rythms and their locations having been discovered.

Also, I think that "incorrect feeling" (lack of familiarity) sensations protray problems in emotional/sensory coordination.

My personal opinion is that this may result from certain temporal/parietal foci occasionally involving deeper temporal structures such as the amygdala as well.

This would mean a rather ample area, including in different cases P circuit, S1 to S5, etc.

[Spurius]

Think it could be deeper, in the central vestibular nuclei in the brainstem. There's a whole bundle of integration/reintegration of every sense going on there.

'The central vestibular nuclei comprise a set of neurons in the brainstem that are responsible for receiving, integrating, and distributing information that controls motor activities such as eye and head movements, postural reflexes, and gravity-dependent autonomic reflexes and spatial orientation.'

Any sense of panic would be left to the amygdala, for sure, no problems there.

http://vestibular.wustl.edu/vestibular.html

[Ummon]

That would surely resolve a lot of issues with the ample region I postulated, and the distance from known pacemaker nuclei.

I am sure that the effects on vision and hearing would then result from synesthesia and high level integration of multiple sensory pathways as you originally suggested.

[Spurius]

Yep, I think so, and there's another centre in the ear, and IIRC there's another loop going on there where visual and auditory data gets muxed (multiplexed) in some fashion. Temporal madness can occur if that whole loop gets out of synch, too.

As to the cause - infection, somehow?

[Ummon]

Yep, I think so, and there's another centre in the ear, and IIRC there's another loop going on there where visual and auditory data gets muxed (multiplexed) in some fashion. Temporal madness can occur if that whole loop gets out of synch, too.

As to the cause - infection, somehow?

EBV as far as we can tell infects only B lymphocytes (and precursors) if I am not mistaken. That might be a concomitant Coxsackie A or B, you mean?

Incidentally I think The Fish will enlighten us on this matter.

By the way, severe mononucleosis can be accompanied by lymphocytic meningitis, for sure.

[Spurius]

The Fish? Ew, a local specialist? Interesting.

Probably Coxsackie - at least one of the strains can lead to aseptic meningitis, another interestingly to blisters on soles and handpalms.

[Ummon]

He is a Psychiatrist if I am not mistaken, surely his microbiology is more recent than mine.

[The Fish]

He is a Psychiatrist if I am not mistaken, surely his microbiology is more recent than mine.

I'm far from a Psychiatrist or neurologist; still just a lowly med student. But as far as I am aware, no CNS infection has been shown to cause synesthetic experiences in a significant number of patients. The mechanism behind the process is still not known, but if I had to surmise, I would think the culprit could possibly be a vascular phenomenon.

Migraines are still a mystery, but the mechanism appears to be related to vasodilation and the release of inflammatory cytokines causing the pain and possibly the neurological symptoms (a theory supported by the fact that serotonin agonist drugs such as sumatriptan, which have vasocontrictive effects, help in the treatment of migraines). Interestingly, pharmacological agents that cause synesthesia, namely LSD, are also serotonin agonists (although they act at the serotonin 2 receptors, rather than the serotonin 1D receptors that the triptans do). It could be, then, that somehow vascular changes cause an increase in pressure or a change in blood flow that result in abnormal neuronal activity, and perhaps a breakdown in normal pathway architectures that result in a mix-up. These are only my very un-expert musings, however.

[christof139]

Wearing bifocals and trifocals also cause these things to occur. Chris

[Spurius]

There's one form of contamination that's pretty hard to sterilize against IIRC - prionic material? (remember as much from reading about CJ/BSE) :

There's some relation, I found:

http://vir.sgmjournals.org/cgi/content/full/84/12/3495