Also known as Todd’s syndrome, in this syndrome objects are misperceived, usually appearing larger (macrospia) or smaller (microspia) than they really are. This will usually be associated with a distorted sense of time and with visual hallucinations. Occurs most commonly with migraine, parietal lobe lesions and with hallucinogen intoxication.
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I’ve still never ever encountered this, have you?
No, but I’ve also yet to encouter Capgras Syndromeand people tell me that’s reasonably common….
I’ve seen Capgras Syndrome and the delusion of Fregoli but still never seen Todd’s syndrome, or even heard of a case or had a colleague who’s seen it!
I am not sure whether it counts, but this distortion (invariably applying to my own body parts) is one of my most vivid memories of early adolescent/late childhood fevers: ben knees when in bed tall as a mountain etc.
I also experienced similar (though being woozily aware of a delusional character of the sensation) while mixing diazepam & alcohol in my late teens/early 20’s for recreational reasons.
I believe I may have suffered from this as child. I grew up in an abusive house and when my mother was being particularly violent, my sense of perception would distort making her appear both minutely small and extremely large at the same time. I associate it with times of stress. It has only happended a couple of times since childhood. Once a friend was stood talking very intently to me as I was sitting on the sofa and I suddenly experienced the same symptons as I had before. My perception of my body also changes and my feet and hands seem to be a great distance away from the trunk of my body.
Like the commentator above, I also had this in bed occasionally, and would feel that my body was incredibly distorted (often knees and my neck!).
Although a very strange feeling, it never disturbed me since I had it throughout childhood and recognised it would pass when the stressful event passed. As it happens rarely these days, I don’t worry about it all.
I’m an AIWS sufferer and have just started a blog.
http://thisshrinkingworld.blogspot.com/
You may be interested.
I can’t believe that there are heatlhcare professionals who have never encountered case descriptions of this phenomenon. Once, playing Dungeons and Dragons as a teenager, high on weed and cocaine, and also drunk, looking down at a map spread out on a kitchen table, I felt *huge*… The feeling is very hard to describe, but my sense of proportion was completely out of wack. The first time I heard of macrocopia, as applied to Alice in Wonderland, it made perfect sense to me, though, having experienced the sensation myself, first hand. As an adult, coincidently, I suffer from occasional but severe migraines.
My son started these Alice in Wonderland episodes last spring. I have held off on vaccinating my kids until they were a little older and their immune systems were developed. He started having episodes where everything looked “small” and had 3 such occurences over a 3 week period just after his first vaccines at age 5. We had a clean brain MRI, and 2 EEG’s that showed a propensity for seizures. No episodes all summer, then this September he began to have increasingly frequent and longer episodes–sometimes several in a day that would leave him napping. He finds it funny, but I know he is scared. He also complains that his legs hurt afterwards. He just completed a 24-hour EEG and we hope to find some answers. I find almost nothing like this when searching online.
I have also been told by a naturopath that these are symptoms of mercury in the brain.