Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuffworks
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And
Speaker 1: todays St Patrick's Today. So we have a little bit
Speaker 1: of a little bit of fun here for you from
Speaker 1: the archives, an episode about lepri Cons a little bit,
Speaker 1: but also primarily about hallucination. Yes, Liliputian hallucinations we're talking
Speaker 1: about on the tiny, tiny scale. So we hope that
Speaker 1: you guys enjoy and have a happy holiday. I have
Speaker 1: always loved St. Patrick's Day. I don't have I'm basically
Speaker 1: of Scotch German heritage, so I don't have that you know,
Speaker 1: distinctive Irish roots link to it, and I don't have it,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't have the like the Catholic link
Speaker 1: to it either. But from a very early age, like
Speaker 1: my family was always in to St. Patrick's Day. You know,
Speaker 1: my mom's mom is a kindergarten teacher, so we would
Speaker 1: have green things, we would eat green treats, green beer, well,
Speaker 1: no green beer, but but maybe like a green cake
Speaker 1: or a cupcake or something. And I still with St
Speaker 1: Patrick's Day comes around, I'm like I need to eat
Speaker 1: something that's green. I need to get like a pistatio cupcakes,
Speaker 1: the Statio pudding. Um. But more importantly, we would, to
Speaker 1: a certain extent, we would celebrate the the Irish myth
Speaker 1: of the of the leprechn We would always watch Darby
Speaker 1: O Gil and the Little People, that classic Disney film
Speaker 1: with Sean Connery in it. Wow, you guys did it up. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were big into the holidays, so we would always
Speaker 1: watch Darbo Gil and a Little People. Sean Connery would
Speaker 1: sing and it was awesome. Lepri cons would run around,
Speaker 1: there was a banshee. Um. You know, it was just
Speaker 1: it was a great film. I still watch it from
Speaker 1: time to time. I just I feel like this is
Speaker 1: really informed, like your ideas of creatures in the world.
Speaker 1: Like somehow this is like an early influence on you. Yeah, definitely,
Speaker 1: I mean we we really we got into Halloween and
Speaker 1: then we would really get My big thing on on
Speaker 1: holidays is that if a holiday has magic to it,
Speaker 1: then it's in creatures specifically, then it's great. Like I
Speaker 1: can obviously Halloween. I love Christmas. You know, you know,
Speaker 1: the Christmas season can get a bit annoying when it's
Speaker 1: over commercialization, but ultimately it's a season in which, on
Speaker 1: one hand you have a magical man sneaking into your
Speaker 1: house to give you gifts. There's there's Crampus running around
Speaker 1: beating people. There's what's his name, Brumschnickel, the the other
Speaker 1: Germanic holiday visitor. There at various takes on St. Nick
Speaker 1: And then and if you get into the more religious
Speaker 1: aspect of it too, you have like the Son of
Speaker 1: God being born on earth. They're they're all these fantastic
Speaker 1: things happening. St. Patrick's Day is also in that vein,
Speaker 1: unlike Valentine's Day, where it's just about people in love
Speaker 1: and stuff. But but St. Patty's Day there's this backbone
Speaker 1: of myth and legend to it and uh and it's awesome.
Speaker 1: So so what is your background with Leprika? Well, quickly,
Speaker 1: Valentine's Day clearly needs some sort of creature's lacking that
Speaker 1: we should really get into the idea of brainstorming that
Speaker 1: without listening. Yeah, yeah, that's another s side project for
Speaker 1: all of us. Um, But for me, St. Pat's has
Speaker 1: just always been St. Pat's. I gotta say. In my
Speaker 1: family it was sort of like their Santa Claus is
Speaker 1: really like the dude down the street who's dressing up
Speaker 1: and um, lepricrons don't exist truly, really, and happy fourth Birthday,
Speaker 1: I'm just kidding, no, but really that wasn't That's not
Speaker 1: really something that we celebrated much. But I will say
Speaker 1: that the diminutive, diminutive stature of lepricrons always thought were
Speaker 1: fascinating as a little kid. And what I find even
Speaker 1: more fascinating is that there is a type of hallucination
Speaker 1: that deals with this, this Liliputian quality. Um. And that's
Speaker 1: what we're going to talk about today, because again in
Speaker 1: celebration of St. Patty's Day, but also as a further
Speaker 1: investigation into how the mind works and how it scales
Speaker 1: our reality. Alright, So the Leprechnilipic from Irish folklore, this
Speaker 1: is a fairy shoemaker uh and he's and he goes
Speaker 1: by various names including it really depends on where you
Speaker 1: are in particular region of Ireland uh and or the
Speaker 1: history books. So you have lucre pan and again this
Speaker 1: basically translates to little body and then there are various
Speaker 1: versions of that lubrican lubrican lucre pan Luprican. They are
Speaker 1: all these various takes on it, but as the one
Speaker 1: that we really go with today, of course is Lepricn.
Speaker 1: And the Lepricn is a is again a shoemaker. You
Speaker 1: generally would see him with just a single shoe. There
Speaker 1: would never be a second shoe around, which is a
Speaker 1: little suspect and should have been a tip off to
Speaker 1: people who end up messing with said lepricon. This is
Speaker 1: like waste management job, Like, you know, maybe that's for
Speaker 1: Lepricn being is shoemaker. Yeah, like you should be a
Speaker 1: little aware that where's the other shoe. There's something fishy
Speaker 1: going on also, and this is something that will come
Speaker 1: up if, especially if the Lepricn is pressed about his
Speaker 1: personal belongings. He carries a p but the purse only
Speaker 1: contains a single shilling, much like a pizza delivery boy
Speaker 1: only carries twenty dollars or less. The idea here is, oh,
Speaker 1: you're gonna try and steal me gold. I only have
Speaker 1: this one shilling, but I may have lots of gold elsewhere.
Speaker 1: That's the big thing. This idea grows that Leprichns have
Speaker 1: access to a massive quantity of gold and and certainly
Speaker 1: in the mythology they do. They're paid by the ferry
Speaker 1: folk for what I'm not sure. I guess repairing that
Speaker 1: one shoe over and over again. So and there they
Speaker 1: save up their money and they're laundering the money kind
Speaker 1: of kind of money Launders h. But people get this
Speaker 1: in their mind, Oh there's a Lepricn. If I capture
Speaker 1: the Lepricn, then I can get access to his fabulous gold.
Speaker 1: I can make him tell me where it is. And
Speaker 1: later you get into the idea of the Lepricn gives
Speaker 1: you three wishes. But ultimately the route is, if you
Speaker 1: catch a Leprichn, you can totally rob him of everything
Speaker 1: he owns. That's how the the average Lepricn chasing uh
Speaker 1: individual was was thinking. So, um, what would typically happen?
Speaker 1: I should say that the classic story, of course, is
Speaker 1: the guy catches the Lepricn says, oh, take me to
Speaker 1: your gold. And you have to know that if you
Speaker 1: look away from the Lepricn at all, then he can vanish,
Speaker 1: he can turn it visible. He's a supernatural creature with
Speaker 1: these powers at his disposal. So what happens if the
Speaker 1: Lebricn says, oh, I'll take you to the bush that
Speaker 1: I have the gold buried beneath and so, and who
Speaker 1: knows if this bush actually has the gold under it
Speaker 1: or not. Um it works. The trick works well either way.
Speaker 1: But it takes him out there and says, oh, it's
Speaker 1: under this bush. And then the guy who's captured the
Speaker 1: Lepricn realize I don't have a shovel. I have no
Speaker 1: way of digging up this gold. So he says, I
Speaker 1: know what I'll do. I'll take this red bandana or this, uh,
Speaker 1: this kerchief or whatever, and I'll tie it, tie this
Speaker 1: red kerchief to this bush, and then I'll go home
Speaker 1: and I'll get my shovel and i'll come back. So
Speaker 1: he lets the Lepricn free, goes back home, he gets
Speaker 1: the shovel, comes back, and what has the Lepricn done.
Speaker 1: The Lepricn is tied the red kerchief to every bush
Speaker 1: and tree in sight, so there's no way for him
Speaker 1: to remember which uch. What's he gonna do dig up
Speaker 1: all of them? He'll try for a little bit before
Speaker 1: he loses his mind, I guess. But that's the trickster
Speaker 1: aspect of the lepricn. Okay, see that just takes me
Speaker 1: back to the thirty Rock maxim, which is never follow
Speaker 1: a hippie to a second location. Same thing with the lepricron, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: so he the elepricns engage in various tricks like this.
Speaker 1: They are largely solitary creatures, though they do have a
Speaker 1: king name Lubden. They're all males too, correct. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: did see some possible mention of female elepricns, and the
Speaker 1: idea being that female elepricuns do exist, but they're even
Speaker 1: more tricky, so they're I guess they're harder to observe
Speaker 1: in nature. They're making that second too, yeah, or maybe
Speaker 1: they're lessened to messing around and and and deceiving humans.
Speaker 1: Because ultimately, the idea here is that lepricns are a
Speaker 1: type of fairy folk. They are fairies and fairies. The
Speaker 1: notion of fairy varies greatly around the world, but there
Speaker 1: exists a nearly global idea of diminutive men, magical humanoids
Speaker 1: and that are out there in the world, often generally
Speaker 1: hidden from view, kind of an underworld taking place or
Speaker 1: you know, or in the natural world or underground or
Speaker 1: you know, somewhere that the humans are less likely to
Speaker 1: see them during the course of their day. What I'm
Speaker 1: trying to say is that they have a rich cultural
Speaker 1: history um and some amazing mythology going on there beyond
Speaker 1: the lepricn but all of this relates to fairy f
Speaker 1: like Eventually, the idea is that even these magical people
Speaker 1: were defeated by essentially the modern day Celts, and they
Speaker 1: drive all these magical people out into the peripheries of
Speaker 1: the world. But you can still glimpse them, you still
Speaker 1: see them sometimes. Well. See, this is what I think
Speaker 1: is so interesting about it, is that it is so
Speaker 1: deeply ingrained in the cultural fabric, particularly and when we
Speaker 1: talk about lebri cons in Ireland right and how this
Speaker 1: really informs everybody's perception of life. And I wanted to
Speaker 1: point out a couple of things. One is that Lepricrons
Speaker 1: are protected under European Union Law KULD you not, yes,
Speaker 1: at least the ones that dwell in calling Ford in Ireland.
Speaker 1: The directive is an effort to preserve the rich biodiversity
Speaker 1: of the area called the slab Foy Loop, which is
Speaker 1: now a protected area for flora, fauna, wild animals, and
Speaker 1: lepri cons. And this is a directive that was stemmed
Speaker 1: in part by a group of lobbyists who recounted a
Speaker 1: tale in nineteen nine of p J. O'Hare who happened
Speaker 1: to be over by wishing well this man and he
Speaker 1: heard a scream and he said he went to the
Speaker 1: wishing well and he found, um, first of all, a
Speaker 1: patch of burnt ground. And beside this patch he found
Speaker 1: a little hat, jacket and trousers with four gold coins
Speaker 1: in the pockets. The close of the naked lepre con,
Speaker 1: as this lepricon is called, are actually on display at
Speaker 1: Pj's Pub in carling Ford. So you know, as this
Speaker 1: a tourist trap, absolutely, but again is it part of
Speaker 1: the imagination, the the cultural fabric. And um, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that pg o hair was that he
Speaker 1: actually witnessed. You know this What we see is that
Speaker 1: maybe a streaking lebre con gone gone wild. But um,
Speaker 1: but but perhaps p J O'Hare was also participating and um,
Speaker 1: you know, some sort of cultural tradition. Maybe he had
Speaker 1: too much to drink, or maybe he had a hallucination. Okay,
Speaker 1: And this is where this really comes into play because,
Speaker 1: according to Oliver Sacks and his World Science Festival interview
Speaker 1: about his new book on hallucinations. He says that hallucinations
Speaker 1: really are cultural in nature and specific to the individual's background.
Speaker 1: So he said that seeing miniature people is one type
Speaker 1: of hallucination, as we said, a subtype. But depending on
Speaker 1: the person's cultural background, the miniature person could be a lepricn,
Speaker 1: a dwarf, a ary. So that's why I think this
Speaker 1: is fascinating because, uh, if you have this hallucination, it
Speaker 1: is colored by your perception, what you have grown up with,
Speaker 1: the sort of stories, and this is the sort of
Speaker 1: thing that might be expressed depending on certain external conditions
Speaker 1: or neurological conditions that you have. So of course, if
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about these Liliputian hallucinations, and that's
Speaker 1: what they're called, we should first sort of give a
Speaker 1: little bit of an intro on hallucinations. Yeah, it's worth
Speaker 1: noting that hallucination is we're discussing here. It's just one
Speaker 1: way of looking at essentially paranormal experience. As we discussed
Speaker 1: in our alien abduction episode. People have always seen weird
Speaker 1: things in the woods and the skies. He used to
Speaker 1: be fairies. Then depending on your cultural flavoring, maybe it's
Speaker 1: angels or maybe sci fi flavoring makes you see UFOs.
Speaker 1: We've always seen things, We've all we've always had these experiences,
Speaker 1: and there are various ways you can explain them that
Speaker 1: range from simple imagination of a youngster to neuro logical
Speaker 1: disorder and uh and and it's it's definitely happening for
Speaker 1: the person who is experiencing them. Yeah, and UM. When
Speaker 1: we talk about hallucinations, we're talking about many different sensory modalities,
Speaker 1: turning about visual, auditory, old factory, gustatory, tactile, and other um.
Speaker 1: And you can actually if a person is undergoing a
Speaker 1: hallucination at the same time that they're going m R right,
Speaker 1: you can actually try to figure out the type of
Speaker 1: hallucination there have having by looking at the blood flow
Speaker 1: to the region of their brain. And so, for instance,
Speaker 1: if you see increased blood flow to the fusiform gyus,
Speaker 1: which is where you detect face faces, then you know
Speaker 1: someone is having some sort of um visual hallucination having
Speaker 1: to do with perhaps even a little person. UM. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of funny to me because when we talk
Speaker 1: about hallucinations, we really think about them as being apart
Speaker 1: from us and otherworldly. Yeah, we tend to think of them.
Speaker 1: An hallucination is seeing something in the world as it is,
Speaker 1: not it's seeing the world wrong, but that that really
Speaker 1: implies that there is a correct and definitive way to
Speaker 1: experience reality. Yeah, because I was thinking about this. We
Speaker 1: really do have a very tenuous line between imagination and reality.
Speaker 1: And I was thinking about this in the context of
Speaker 1: our blue sky, right, because what is the blue sky
Speaker 1: butt an illusion to us? Because if you think about it,
Speaker 1: the only reason why we're seeing a blue sky is
Speaker 1: because violet and blue have the shortest wavelengths and they
Speaker 1: scatter a lot more than long ones. Some particles like
Speaker 1: oxygen and nitrogen molecules are present, so those are the
Speaker 1: ones that are most apparent to us. So that's what
Speaker 1: we see when we're looking up in the sky. And
Speaker 1: then it's not that we just see a purple and
Speaker 1: a blue sky. No, the mind can't even really sort
Speaker 1: of deal with that because of the machinery that we
Speaker 1: have um with our perception of color, it kind of
Speaker 1: has to mix some of that with white until it
Speaker 1: turns out to this cohesive blue that we look up
Speaker 1: in the sky at so it really makes you think
Speaker 1: to what extent am I experiencing the world around you?
Speaker 1: I mean, ultimately, our brain, it's it's it's inside of
Speaker 1: some bone, it's inside of some skull, depends on these
Speaker 1: sensory uh mechanisms to experience the world and then translate
Speaker 1: that into data. So essentially the brain is blind anyway. Well,
Speaker 1: and it's highly sensitive to suggestion. We've mentioned this before,
Speaker 1: but there's a twenty eleven study at Whole University in
Speaker 1: the UK, and it asked participants to imagine a color
Speaker 1: while looking at a great pattern. And what they found
Speaker 1: is that those people who were most susceptible to hypnosis
Speaker 1: in other words, given to suggestion, they were able to
Speaker 1: actually hallucinate the colors at will when they were asked to,
Speaker 1: which was corroberated by an m R. I. So again
Speaker 1: there's this idea of you know, what is you know,
Speaker 1: we bring this up a lot, like what is reality
Speaker 1: and how much of it is colored by our perceptions? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So much of the I mean you can argue that
Speaker 1: our perception of reality itself is a is an hallucination,
Speaker 1: and any um alteration of that is just a it's
Speaker 1: just a change in the flavoring. Um. We're gonna take
Speaker 1: a quick break, and when we get back, though, we
Speaker 1: are going to talk about this specific type of hallucination
Speaker 1: that deals with the detection of tiny things, tiny people,
Speaker 1: tiny animals. All right, we're back. And in this episode,
Speaker 1: we of course started off by talking a little bit
Speaker 1: about fairy folk and Laprikaans paranormal experience essentially, and we're
Speaker 1: getting into into discussion of how hallucination, it's particular modes
Speaker 1: of hallucination make us see tiny people and tiny things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, before we start talking about um about
Speaker 1: this perception or this illusion of tiny people or things,
Speaker 1: I wanted to point out that it is amazing when
Speaker 1: you think about it, that our eyes and our minds
Speaker 1: are able to visually reconstruct things. So for instance, if
Speaker 1: you have, you know, a plate on the table and
Speaker 1: the fork next to it, and you continue to look
Speaker 1: back and forth at those items, your brain has to
Speaker 1: over and over again visually reconstruct those items and also
Speaker 1: do that, um, you know, in the context of moving
Speaker 1: back and forth. So it's got the movement element. And
Speaker 1: what we're talking about here is perceptual constancy. So what
Speaker 1: your mind is doing is saying that plate is still
Speaker 1: the plate, and is still the dimension that it is,
Speaker 1: is still the scale that it is. And this is
Speaker 1: a lot of work for your brain to do, in
Speaker 1: your eye to do, to take in all of this
Speaker 1: data and make us feel as though we are on
Speaker 1: the same, uh constant state where things are the same
Speaker 1: and have a constancy to them. Yeah. One of the
Speaker 1: things that this discussion of hallucination really drives home is
Speaker 1: that site and our perception are the mental processes that
Speaker 1: makes site possible are pretty complex and uh, the least
Speaker 1: little bit of something can can go wrong or or change,
Speaker 1: and it can can have some pretty dramatic effects on
Speaker 1: how you perceive reality. Yeah, it's funny because you really
Speaker 1: do take it for granted. How stable the images are
Speaker 1: around you and how stable the story that that your
Speaker 1: perception is telling you is all because of these different
Speaker 1: parts of your brains working in concert. There is something
Speaker 1: called micropesha or alice in Wonderland syndrome, and this is
Speaker 1: when objects actually appear smaller, and it's not necessarily the
Speaker 1: mechanics of the guys, but it's really the interpretation of
Speaker 1: the data that causes the objects in the visual field
Speaker 1: to appear minuscule. So when you have these lilocution hallucinations, um,
Speaker 1: they are forming complex visual hallucinations of people, objects, or
Speaker 1: animals that are greatly reduced in size or sometimes exaggerated, Yes,
Speaker 1: sometimes exagger which also ends up going into all sorts
Speaker 1: of mythological possibilities there as well. Right, we've got some
Speaker 1: example too that that really sort of dwell in this.
Speaker 1: And the hallucinations are vivid and they evoke varied responses
Speaker 1: including fear, anxiety, or even pleasure. Um, They've been seen
Speaker 1: across the board and people who are experiencing delirium tremens
Speaker 1: from alcohol withdraw, people who have eyesight problems such as
Speaker 1: macular degeneration, and people with mental disorders like schizophrenia. Although
Speaker 1: in schizophrenia, even though hallucinations are are more common, this
Speaker 1: type of hallucination, this little acution, is very rare. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And most of the cases that we're looking at with
Speaker 1: little acuction, Uh, it's a it's a situation where the
Speaker 1: person is otherwise mentally fine, Like they're not They're not
Speaker 1: a disturbed individual or a quote unquote crazy person. It's
Speaker 1: not like, oh, that crazy person on the streets seeing
Speaker 1: little people. Of course, they are they're crazy. No. It's
Speaker 1: for instance, one of the cases that Oliver Sacks talks
Speaker 1: about in in his book Hallucinations, which is excellent high
Speaker 1: They recommend anyone at all interested in this pick that up.
Speaker 1: It's very readable, just a great book. Uh. In his book,
Speaker 1: he talks about a patient that he refers to his Zelda,
Speaker 1: who eated in two thousand nine. She was an historian,
Speaker 1: and some of the hallucinations that she ended up seeing
Speaker 1: included she saw a great granddaughter, she saw a trio
Speaker 1: of witches. She saw her hair rising up in the
Speaker 1: mirror like it was witless. She saw tiny people crawling
Speaker 1: out of the TV. She saw gaily dressed figures sort
Speaker 1: of parading around. She saw six ominous tall men in
Speaker 1: brown suits around her hospital bed. She saw a little
Speaker 1: men in green caps. And she saw small fairy like
Speaker 1: children sort of moving around as well. Just to give
Speaker 1: you an idea, because a lot of these hallucinations, again
Speaker 1: it's things are larger or smaller than they need to
Speaker 1: be um So you're you're encountering giants, you're encountering little
Speaker 1: people oftentimes that they're really brilliant to behold. The color
Speaker 1: scheme will be amazing. So you in the costuming if
Speaker 1: the if costumes are perceivable, the costumes will be crazy
Speaker 1: and exotically bright. So you can really see where the
Speaker 1: idea of a fairy folk can emerge from. This beca
Speaker 1: all they were little people, and they were dressed like
Speaker 1: they were from another world, and their colors were unreal
Speaker 1: and magical. Well, and they were mischievous. To write, a
Speaker 1: lot of times these accounts have um the little people
Speaker 1: that are running around doing various things that we are
Speaker 1: nefarious or yeah, and they're disappearing or they're reappearing necessarily
Speaker 1: obeying the physical laws of our world. Now, these are
Speaker 1: called released hallucinations because it's thought that they are released
Speaker 1: or instigated by the removal of normal visual afferent input
Speaker 1: into the association quartex. So in the case of Zelda,
Speaker 1: there was reduced blood flow to the optical and parietal lobes,
Speaker 1: and so this caused the hallucinations. Um. But probably one
Speaker 1: of the one of the things that is most associated
Speaker 1: with this is something called the Charles Bonnet syndrome yes
Speaker 1: or CBS, and this is a common condition among people
Speaker 1: with compromised vision. So when you think compromised vision, of
Speaker 1: course We're not saying the person is necessarily completely Uh.
Speaker 1: They might be suffering from just age related necular degeneration, cataracts, glaucoma,
Speaker 1: diabetic eye disease. Their site may be somewhat limited, but
Speaker 1: they're still able to visually perceive the world to a
Speaker 1: certain degree. Yeah. The idea is that the information received
Speaker 1: from your eyes actually stops the brain from creating its
Speaker 1: own pictures. So when you lose your sight or partially
Speaker 1: lose your sight or it's damaged, your brain is not
Speaker 1: receiving as much information from your eyes as it's used to,
Speaker 1: and it begins to fill in those gaps by creating
Speaker 1: this sort of fantasy uh, pictures or patterns. And then
Speaker 1: when this occurs, you experience the images short in your
Speaker 1: brain as hallucinations. It's kind of this idea that the
Speaker 1: world that we live in, because you can we look
Speaker 1: at like when we're just looking around a room, we're
Speaker 1: looking at particular little spaces, and then then we're moving
Speaker 1: in another little space where we're kind of basically the
Speaker 1: world that we're in exists in our minds, and we
Speaker 1: use our vision to constantly upgrade the details of that
Speaker 1: mental image that we interact with there was a one
Speaker 1: case of a Miss c an eighty year old woman.
Speaker 1: She complained of little people dressed in blue and gray
Speaker 1: leaves hiding in her cupboard cupboards, and she also saw
Speaker 1: tiny black cats from time to time, and her chief
Speaker 1: complaint was that the little people like to watch her undressed.
Speaker 1: So of course she was examined. They found that her
Speaker 1: cognitive functions were fined fine, fine and uh, and that
Speaker 1: really again it came down to impairments in her visual field,
Speaker 1: again creating in this story from this lack of information
Speaker 1: that was being processed. Another interesting aspect about little acutions,
Speaker 1: especially as a as a related to CBS, Alver Sachs
Speaker 1: points out that most CBS hallucinations are ultimately inspiring, pleasant,
Speaker 1: even friendly. Um not to say they are there. There
Speaker 1: will be some that are a little serving, such as
Speaker 1: the brown uh dressed men that are really taller around
Speaker 1: Zelda's hospital that was that is ominous in nature, But
Speaker 1: for the most part they tend to be lighter and
Speaker 1: more amusing and magical in a in an uplifting sense.
Speaker 1: Whereas there's a lot that goes on with with paranormal experience,
Speaker 1: be it alien abduction, that is rude of scenario which
Speaker 1: is rooted in say sleep paralysis, which is terrifying because
Speaker 1: your your mind body connection is doing something weird and
Speaker 1: add a little flavoring to it from whatever your worldview
Speaker 1: or mythology is, and it's it can be a terrifying situation.
Speaker 1: But with CBS you tend to see these more sort
Speaker 1: of like, huh, there are little people in my closet.
Speaker 1: That's totally cool, but I would rather than not look
Speaker 1: at me while I'm naked. There's this idea to you
Speaker 1: that perhaps, um, you know, it has an adaptive function
Speaker 1: in terms of people who in general with hallucination is
Speaker 1: not just little people that if someone has lost someone
Speaker 1: in particularly in the elderly, if they hallucinate, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe a loved one who has departed, that this is
Speaker 1: a source of comfort to them, bereavement hallucination, so that
Speaker 1: this is a whole area as well. Um yeah, it's
Speaker 1: this idea that we're as as one. If we're losing
Speaker 1: our ability to update the mental image in our head,
Speaker 1: we're having to update it internally. Like imagine you're inside
Speaker 1: your house and you're wanting to paint an image of
Speaker 1: your backyard, so you look out the back window every day,
Speaker 1: and you paint a little more of this image, and
Speaker 1: you updated a little more, and then one day your
Speaker 1: windows are walled up or they're frosted over and you
Speaker 1: can't see out them all that. Well, well then you
Speaker 1: have to maybe you're listening, maybe you're you're drawing on
Speaker 1: your memory to try and and uh and and alter
Speaker 1: that picture and make it as accurate as possible. But
Speaker 1: then inevitably you're bringing in errors. You're bringing in um
Speaker 1: even magical creations into that painting. That reminds me of
Speaker 1: Anton syndrome when they'ror you have someone who is trying
Speaker 1: to replace I put in quote their their reality with
Speaker 1: a hallucination to simulate eyesight. Because because this occurs and
Speaker 1: joining people that are really like totally blind, extremely deteriation,
Speaker 1: totally blind from cortical damage um and and that damage
Speaker 1: can be caused by stroke UM and this affects the
Speaker 1: optic lobes. So these people are absolutely unaware of their
Speaker 1: blindness and they insist that they can still see. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like they'll say they'll they'll say like, hey, you you're blind.
Speaker 1: Don't try and walk across the living room because their
Speaker 1: toys all over the floor and they'll say I can
Speaker 1: totally see, and like they believe they can see now,
Speaker 1: they'll they'll end up stepping on the toys because ultimately
Speaker 1: they that they can't they are blind. But but to them,
Speaker 1: they feel they're experiencing. Now. If you tell them, hey,
Speaker 1: describe that person setting on the couch over there, they
Speaker 1: won't blink. They'll just describe the person. The description may
Speaker 1: be completely wrong, or it may be reasonably correct based
Speaker 1: on previous knowledge of the individual, you know, whatever, But
Speaker 1: but they won't hesitate because in their in their mind,
Speaker 1: they do see and see. I find that example so
Speaker 1: fascinating just because that really does point to this adaptive function,
Speaker 1: because if you have lost your your eyesight and you
Speaker 1: are lacking that's stimuli, then your brain is just making
Speaker 1: us smelacrum of that of reality, which I think is
Speaker 1: just fascinating. Sacks also shared an account of a patient
Speaker 1: who in the in the nineteen eighties, UH would a
Speaker 1: blind patient went on a drinking binge and saw again
Speaker 1: while in the midst of this this drinking like the
Speaker 1: next morning remembered having seen as if his side had returned,
Speaker 1: But it was a hallucination. Hallucination and again it's just
Speaker 1: all it's a lot of this really drives home just
Speaker 1: how complex side is and how how complex our our
Speaker 1: observation of the world is to it and to what
Speaker 1: extent is is all of our site hallucination. Yeah, again,
Speaker 1: this idea that there's this, uh, this visual constancy that
Speaker 1: goes on that we just that's running in the background,
Speaker 1: and we don't even think about how tenuous that is. So,
Speaker 1: as Oliver Sacks points out, Liliputian hallucinations can also occur
Speaker 1: in migraines. Particularly, He points out the Migraine Blog, a
Speaker 1: series host of it on New York Times, which is
Speaker 1: a blog just about the author's experiences with migraines. Now,
Speaker 1: I do experience migraines. I do. Yeah, what what are
Speaker 1: they like for you? Do you ever see anything with them? Sometimes?
Speaker 1: I've seen lights And actually a good many of the
Speaker 1: females in my family have histories of really like pretty
Speaker 1: intense histories with migraines, and they complain of something they
Speaker 1: call an aura. It's a feeling, and and they also
Speaker 1: get the strobe light effect. Interesting, I've never experienced a migraine.
Speaker 1: My father used to get them, and I think my
Speaker 1: My sister experiences them from time to time as well.
Speaker 1: But in there they're more extreme nature. There, it's almost
Speaker 1: like a supernatural experience, like it's it's like something from
Speaker 1: another world is reaching out and touching your brain rather painfully. Uh,
Speaker 1: but in in a certain way, illuminatingly for a few
Speaker 1: seconds or minutes or what have you. Um. And again,
Speaker 1: what we're talking about is uh a sort of impairment
Speaker 1: of the visual field care right, Yeah, people will see lights,
Speaker 1: like you said, geometric patterns, uh, flashes of light, zigzags,
Speaker 1: blind spots, shimmering spots or stars are as, and in
Speaker 1: some cases tiny man and tiny animals uh. In On
Speaker 1: the Migraine blog, the author of was talking about how
Speaker 1: they were reading a reading a book lying there, um,
Speaker 1: and they looked down and they saw a small pink
Speaker 1: man and his pink ox, perhaps six or seven inches high.
Speaker 1: So the audice says, they were perfectly made creatures, and
Speaker 1: except for their color, they looked very real. They didn't
Speaker 1: speak to me, but they walked around and I watched
Speaker 1: them with fascination and the kind of um amiable tenderness.
Speaker 1: They stayed for some minutes and then disappeared. I have
Speaker 1: often wished they would return, but they never have um,
Speaker 1: which is this just amazing to think of that. And
Speaker 1: you know, you just said there's migraine hits and you
Speaker 1: look down and there's a little pink farmer in his
Speaker 1: ox and they're they're not really concerned with you, which
Speaker 1: which ties in nicely with when we were talking about
Speaker 1: fairy experiences and in a lien experience. Paranormal exper is
Speaker 1: around the world. They vary so much. Sometimes it is
Speaker 1: a terrible experience where you're like, oh, I'm being abducted
Speaker 1: by aliens or I'm tormented by demons. But in other
Speaker 1: cases it's it's a matter of for a brief second,
Speaker 1: you have a peak into a magical world just beyond
Speaker 1: our own. Well. I think anybody who has ever had
Speaker 1: a really bad migraine can attest to you. One of
Speaker 1: the things that is probably interesting to them as well
Speaker 1: as me, is that when you have an awful one,
Speaker 1: it feels like the fog is rolling in and it
Speaker 1: to some degree it does feel like your vision is
Speaker 1: being affected, not just with the strobe light effect, but
Speaker 1: as if, um something's just kind of moving over your
Speaker 1: brain like a cloud. So it's interesting to see that
Speaker 1: that sort of deprivation of stimulation or stimuli might manifest
Speaker 1: itself with a Litiputian hallucination. Yeah. And in the book,
Speaker 1: Fax points out that in a migraine, a wave of quote,
Speaker 1: electrical excitation slowly moves across the visual cortex and on
Speaker 1: the way, it's possible that it directly directly stimulates clusters
Speaker 1: of orientation sensitive neurons in the visual cortex, and this
Speaker 1: direct stimulation causes patterns patients to see shimmering light, zigzag fortifications, etcetera.
Speaker 1: As we and as we see the wave move through
Speaker 1: the brain during a migraine, when we're looking at brain scans, uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's matching the movement of the shimmering
Speaker 1: bars in the patient's site. Huh. So that that's very
Speaker 1: interesting that that sense of movement isn't necessarily an illusion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's amazing. I mean, I I'm not
Speaker 1: envious of people who have to deal with migraines because,
Speaker 1: like I said, it's just a normal headache suffer. Um.
Speaker 1: I would see my father get these migraines and I
Speaker 1: it was like, Wow, how can a headache do that bad?
Speaker 1: That you just you know that you're you're just you know,
Speaker 1: gripping your skull like I've never had had I had
Speaker 1: a headache that bad. Uh. But but now that now
Speaker 1: that I see a little bit more that it's involved
Speaker 1: in it, I can totally get it. So there you
Speaker 1: have it, leprech On Hallucinations. Fun little topic that we did,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, today was a perfect day to
Speaker 1: bring it back out for your amusement. Hey. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: check out the rest of stuff to Blow your mind
Speaker 1: dot com, where you'll find all of our podcasts, videos,
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