Back in the 1950s, a psychiatrist described a man who complained that his head felt "twice its normal size and as light as a feather."
早在20世纪50年代,一位精神病医生就曾描述过一名男子,他抱怨自己的头感觉“是正常大小的两倍,而且轻如羽毛”,
He also occasionally felt like one of his limbs was missing.
他偶尔也会感觉自己的一条四肢不见了。
Around the same time, another middle-aged woman reported to a clinic
大约在同一时间,另一名中年女性向一家诊所报告说,
that she felt that she "got so big that if she put out her hand she could touch the far wall," or that her hands would "drop off and disappear."
她觉得自己“变得太大了,如果她伸出手,就能触摸到远处的墙”,或者她的手会“掉下来消失。”
Curiouser and curiouser. At least, that's what the doctors thought — which is why these types of symptoms are known as Alice in Wonderland Syndrome.
真是太神奇了。至少,医生们是这么想的——这就是为什么这些症状被称为爱丽丝漫游仙境综合症的原因。
Fortunately, these sorts of symptoms are rare — and seem to be related to easily treatable conditions.
幸运的是,这种症状很少见,而且似乎与之相关的疾病都比较容易治疗。
Symptoms of Alice in Wonderland syndrome all seem to involve distorted perception, and are most common in kids.
爱丽丝漫游仙境综合征的症状似乎都与扭曲的感知有关,而且最常见于儿童。
In a 1998 paper, one child reported seeing his TV screen upside down, and that the windows of his house seemed crooked.
在1998年的一篇论文中,一个孩子报告说他看到电视屏幕上下颠倒,他家的窗户也好像歪了。
Another young girl reported seeing ghosts, and people looking distorted.
另一个年轻女孩报告说看到了鬼魂,人们看起来也很扭曲。
These are all examples of some common visual hallucinations associated with the syndrome,
这些都是一些常见的与该综合征相关的幻视的例子,
all generally called metamorphopsia, or visual distortions of size, movement, or color.
这些幻觉通常被称为变形觉,或是大小、运动或颜色的视觉扭曲。
Like perceiving things as smaller or larger than they actually are.
感觉事物比实际的要小或要大。
Other types can seem like looking at everything through a telescope — or like looking at everything through the wrong end of a telescope.
其他类型的患者好像是用望远镜看一切,或是像用望远镜错误的一端看一切事物。
There are also auditory symptoms, like hearing people's voices become distorted, or hearing unexplained music, voices, or other noises.
还有一些幻听症状,比如听到人们的声音变得扭曲,或者听到无法解释的音乐、声音或其他噪音。
But there's a key difference between these hallucinations and ones you'd experience for other reasons, like drug use or schizophrenia.
但这些幻觉和其它原因(如吸毒或精神分裂症)引起的幻觉有一个关键的区别。
People with Alice in Wonderland syndrome always seem to know they're illusions. They don't get confused about what's real and what's not.
爱丽丝漫游仙境综合症患者似乎总是知道自己产生了幻觉,他们不会混淆现实和虚幻。
So where do these weird sensations come from?
那么这些奇怪的感觉是从何处而来的呢?
Doctors first identified them as possibly related in the early 1950s.
医生们在20世纪50年代初首次确认它们可能存在相关性。
But according to more recent research, migraine and epilepsy aren't always involved.
但根据最近的研究,偏头痛和癫痫并不总是相关的。
A more common explanation is that it's a side effect of having some kind of an infection.
更常见的解释是,这是某种感染的副作用。
In fact, one common infection that's been proposed is the Epstein-Barr virus — more commonly known as mononucleosis, or mono.
事实上,研究人员提出的一种常见感染是爱泼斯坦-巴尔病毒,更常称为单核细胞增多症,或单核细胞增多症。
We're not quite sure how infections could cause hallucinations, but we have some ideas.
我们不太清楚感染是如何引起幻觉的,但我们有一些想法。
One likely explanation is that an infection could change how much oxygenated blood gets to certain regions of the brain involved in processing sensory input.
一种可能的解释是,感染可能改变大脑中参与处理感觉输入的某些区域的含氧血液量。
That 1998 study tested this idea with four kids with Alice in Wonderland syndrome. That's a small sample — but remember, it's a pretty rare condition.
1998年的那项研究,对四名患有爱丽丝漫游仙境综合症的孩子进行了测试。这个研究的样本很小,但记住,这是一种相当罕见的病症。
And they also checked to be sure these kids didn't have one of the other common explanations for the disorder, like migraine or epilepsy.
他们还对这些孩子进行了检查,确保他们没有患上这种疾病的其他常见解释,如偏头痛或癫痫。
Three of the four had had a recent upper respiratory infection, and two had the Epstein-Barr virus.
四名孩子中有三名最近患有上呼吸道感染,两名携带EB病毒。
And all four kids experienced decreased blood flow somewhere in their brain.
所有四名孩子的大脑某处都出现了血流减少的情况。
The sides and parts of the brain involved varied.
涉及的大脑侧面和部位各不相同,
But it was common for it to be somewhere near the visual pathway of the brain, in areas where outside stimulation is known to create hallucinations.
但它通常位于大脑视觉通路附近,即外界刺激产生幻觉的区域。
The researchers were reluctant to jump to conclusions from such a small sample,
研究人员很难从这么小的样本中得出结论,
but the data seem to fit a scenario in which the infection reduces blood flow and affects visual processing.
但这些数据似乎符合这样一种情况,即感染会减少血液流动并影响视觉处理。
But in a pretty amazing case study in 2010, one child experienced symptoms while in an MRI machine.
但在2010年一个令人相当震惊的案例研究中,一名儿童在核磁共振成像仪中出现了这些症状。
Compared to a matched control participant, the child had more activation in the parietal lobe, and less activation in vision centers, while performing some spatial reasoning tasks.
与匹配的对照组相比,这名孩子在执行一些空间推理任务时,顶叶的激活更多,视觉中心的激活更少。
And while it's never a great idea to draw huge conclusions from a study with a sample size of one, it does fit some other things we know about spatial reasoning.
虽然从样本量为一的研究中得出重要的结论,不是一个好主意。但它确实符合已知的关于空间推理的其他一些内容。
Like, we know the parietal lobe plays a big role in spatial reasoning,
比如,我们知道顶叶在空间推理中起着很大的作用,
and there's a parietal visual pathway that's typically associated with perception of where things are in space.
还有一种顶叶视觉通路,它通常与感知物体在空间中的位置有关。
And other studies have linked parietal lobe activation to illusions about the perceived size and shape of your body.
其他的研究也将顶叶的激活与对身体大小和形状的错觉联系起来。
For example, you can trick people into thinking their waist is shrinking by having them put their hands on their hips while experimentally vibrating some tendons in their wrists.
比如,你可以通过让人们把手放在臀部上,同时实验性地振动手腕上的肌腱,让他们认为自己的腰在收缩。
In a study in 2005, people who felt that illusion more strongly also had more activation in two parts of their parietal lobe,
在2005年的一项研究中,那些更强烈地感觉到幻觉的人,其顶叶的两个部分被激活的区域也更多,
suggesting they're involved in your sense of how big your body is.
这表明它们参与了你对身体尺寸的感觉。
But while this evidence points us in the right direction, there's still a lot of dots that need to be connected in explaining exactly how these illusions emerge.
但是,尽管这些证据给我们指明了正确的方向,但在解释这些幻觉是如何产生的过程中,仍然需要把许多点联系起来。
In fact, about half of people who experience these Alice-esque symptoms have no clear reason when diagnosed — no migraine, no infection, nothing.
事实上,大约有一半的人在经历这些爱丽丝式的症状时,没有明确的诊断原因,即没有偏头痛,没有感染,什么症状都没有。
The good news, though? It's also pretty likely for it to just... go away.
不过,好消息是什么呢?也很可能只是......症状消失了。
Although there is one reported case of the syndrome being the result of a rare degenerative brain disorder,
虽然有一项报告的病例表明,这种综合征是一种罕见的大脑退化性疾病的结果,
many kids just grow out of it — or find treatment for the underlying infection or migraine. Which relieves the hallucinations.
但许多孩子只是伴随其成长,或是找到了治疗潜在感染或偏头痛的方法,这样就消除了幻觉。
Lewis Carroll himself wrote in his diaries about suffering from migraines. We definitely can't know for sure whether he had these kinds of symptoms.
刘易斯·卡罗尔自己也在日记中记载过偏头痛,我们无法确定他是否具有这些症状。
But given the similarity between the story he wrote and the symptoms others have reported with migraine,
但是,考虑到他撰写的故事和其他人报告的偏头痛症状之间的相似性,
some people have speculated that perhaps he experienced these visual illusions himself — and thus Alice's Wonderland was inspired.
一些人推测,也许他自己也经历过这些视觉幻觉,从而获得了爱丽丝漫游仙境的灵感。
Thanks for watching this episode of SciShow Psych. If you really want to go down a rabbit hole with us, check out our spin-off podcast, SciShow Tangents.
感谢收看本期《心理科学秀》,如果你真想和我们一起去到一个兔子洞里,可以看看我们的衍生播客SciShow Tangents。
It's made by some of the same folks who bring you SciShow, but like… slightly more competitive, and with more science poems.
它是科学秀同班人马中的一些人制作的,节目更有意思,而且还包含更多的科学诗。
Check it out wherever you get your podcasts!
无论身处何处,都可以通过播客收看!