From the first, there has been a phenomenon of people seeing small humans. Some call it 'microptic' or 'Liliputian'. This is because the work of the brain is very complex, therefore the human brain can produce such events. Hallucinations to see liliput can be created from within the brain before the eyes 'see' it.
Launching Science Alert, Tuesday (12/28/2021) this phenomenon has been known since 1726, when the novel 'Gulliver's Travels' appeared, which tells the story of people who see micro-humans. The famous French psychiatrist Raoul Leroy was curious to try to raise this topic in the early 1900s.
"Such hallucinations exist beyond any micropsy, where while the patient has a normal conception of the size of the objects that surround him, micropsy actually refers only to hallucinations," Leroy wrote in the introduction to one particular case.
"They sometimes occur alone, sometimes accompanied by other psycho-sensory disturbances," he continued.
However, 'Lilliputian' hallucinations are not presented as a criterion for any disease in the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems. This seems to be just a random, unique brain event.
Charles Bonnet syndrome is one exception. The syndrome, which is a rare disease, can cause hallucinations as a result of vision loss. However, these hallucinations are not always in the form of small people, they can also be flashes of light, geometric shapes, or even just lines.
A 2021 study on a sample of volunteers with active Charles Bonnet syndrome found their hallucinatory experiences actually increased in frequency and prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, most likely due to loneliness during lockdown. In addition to Charles Bonnet, in Parkinson's patients there is also the possibility of experiencing these hallucinations.
What do we know about human hallucinations in modern times?
Recently, Leiden University medical historian and psychotic disorder researcher, Jan Dirk Blom, aimed to examine case reports of Lilliputian hallucinations in modern medical archives. After an extensive hunt, Blom managed to find 26 papers on Liliput's hallucinations that he might find relevant. Of these, only 24 provided original case descriptions.
"During the 1980s and 1990s new cases were rarely published, and questions about the source underlying Liliput's hallucinations were forgotten," Blom writes in his 2021 study, published in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Review.
"Despite some renewed interest in the phenomenon over the last two decades, the situation has remained essentially unchanged," he said.
Blom ended up compiling a catalog of 226 unique cases to compare and contrast. Their experiences and backgrounds varied, equally divided between reports of men and women, the oldest being 90 years old, the youngest just four years old. But there are many common threads.
Most people report hallucinations wearing flashy, colorful clothes. Examples are circus clowns, ordinary clowns, or even soldiers jumping up and down. Only a small number of cases report visions in gray or brown colors which tend to be 'moody' or drab.
Blom also says the loss of peripheral sensory input can render parts of the brain normally involved in processing information dysfunctional. Brains collect only the few stimuli they can find to combine sight and color.
