Welcome to the deep dive. Today, we are opening
the file on a highly specific, totally fascinating
perception glitch. It really is one of the most
intriguing glitches we have. Right. We're talking
about Lilliputian hallucinations. Seeing tiny
people. Exactly. And our mission today is to
explore exactly what these miniature visions
are, the surprisingly diverse medical conditions
that actually trigger them, and a decades -old
mycological mystery. The undocumented fungi.
Yeah, these mushrooms that scientists are still
struggling to explain. And to do all this, we're
pulling from a curated stack of sources. We're
starting with a great Wikipedia overview, but
we are digging straight into the foundational
references for you. Which is where the real story
is. Completely. We're looking at clinical literature
from neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews,
pediatric neurology, some historical psychiatric
case reports. There's a brilliant 2026 dispatch
from the BBC in there, too. Yes. And insights
from the Natural History Museum of Utah. It's
a phenomenal stack of research because, you know,
it touches on. one of the most fascinating blind
spots in modern medicine. Which is how we perceive
reality. Exactly. I mean, we walk through the
world assuming that what we see is an objective
reality, a perfect reflection of the physical
space around us. It's not. No, it's not. Today's
topic really pulls the curtain back on how our
brains actively construct that reality from scratch.
And more importantly, it shows us what happens
when the neural wiring crosses in a highly specific,
incredibly vivid way. It's a direct window into
neuroscience and the architecture of human perception.
It really is. Okay, let's unpack this. What exactly
constitutes a Lilliputian hallucination? Because
we aren't just talking about, you know, your
vision getting a little blurry. Right, or just
experiencing micropsia. Where normal objects
just look smaller to you. Exactly. It's not that.
And it's not seeing random geometric shapes floating
in your peripheral vision either. The medical
literature defines these as highly detailed hallucinations
of small humans, animals, or even animals. even
fantasy entities. That level of specificity is
what makes the phenomenon so captivating to me.
The visual cortex isn't just misinterpreting
shadows in the corner of the room. It is generating
fully formed diminutive beings with intentionality,
with movement. But there's a crucial distinction
here, right at the top of our source material,
that separates this from other types of visionary
experiences. Yes. The groundedness. Exactly.
These hallucinations are almost always perceived
as grounded in one's external environment. The
implication there is immense. It is. The person
experiencing this isn't just seeing tiny figures
floating in a void somewhere. Or superimposed
over their vision like a double exposure on a
photograph. They're not. No, they're in the room.
For those of you listening, think about the physics
of the room you are currently in. The brain is
rendering these tiny humans or animals so that
they actively interact with that specific physical
space. Right, like if there's a coffee cup on
the table in front of you. A tiny being might
appear to walk around it. Climb over the handle.
Exactly, or hide behind it. The hallucination
obeys the physical geometry and the lighting
of the real -world environment perfectly. It
maps onto reality in three dimensions. Your brain
is doing real -time 3D spatial mapping and seamlessly
inserting fantasy entities into the feed. It
has this deeply whimsical quality to it, honestly,
almost like a fairy tale coming to life. It does.
And that whimsy actually bleeds into the clinical
literature. Yeah, I love this part. A 2021 systematic
review published by J .D. Blom in the journal
Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews uses a
wonderfully evocative title for this. They refer
to the phenomenon as Leroy's Elusive Little People.
Leroy's Elusive Little People. Naming it after...
Raoul Leroy, the French physician who first formally
categorized the symptom back in 1909. It's a
very poetic way to describe a clinical symptom,
but as whimsical as that sounds, the underlying
triggers for these visions are serious. They're
very real and often completely unrelated to one
another anatomically or chemically. Which is
the puzzle. That lack of a single common cause
is exactly the puzzle the medical community is
still trying to solve. Because we see this across
a remarkably broad spectrum of conditions, the
sources note it can occur in Alice in Wonderland
syndrome, which, you know, feels somewhat intuitive
given the name and its association with distorted
size perception. Sure, that tracks. But it also
shows up in Charles Bonnet syndrome, in schizophrenia.
Peduncular hallucinosis. And even during severe
alcohol withdrawal. It's a massive range. How
do such radically different systemic issues lead
to the exact same miniature output? If we connect
this to the bigger picture, we have to look at
how these different conditions interact with
the brain. Take Charles Bonnet syndrome, for
example. Right. This typically occurs in individuals
who are losing their vision, perhaps due to macular
degeneration or cataracts. Their optic nerve
is healthy, but the eyes are no longer sending
a clear signal. So the brain is essentially sitting
in the dark. Exactly. The brain's visual cortex
is used to processing massive amounts of data
every second. Suddenly it finds itself starved
for input. In response, it starts firing on its
own. It's just filling in the blanks. It fills
in the blanks to keep itself active. And the
result is vivid, complex hallucinations. So the
brain gets bored in the dark and starts inventing
things to look at. But that is fundamentally
different from something like peduncular hallucinosis.
Entirely different. Peduncular hallucinosis is
typically caused by a lesion or a stroke in a
very specific part of the brainstem called the
cerebral peduncle. Which does what, exactly?
It's heavily involved in regulating our sleep
and wake cycles. When it's damaged, the brain's
dream state machinery can inadvertently switch
on while the person is wide awake. Wow. Yeah,
they experience incredibly vivid, often brightly
colored hallucinations that map perfectly onto
their waking reality. And then you have schizophrenia.
Right, which is a complex psychiatric disorder
affecting dopamine pathways and cognitive processing.
And finally, delirium tremens from alcohol withdrawal.
Which is an acute chemical crisis where the entire
nervous system goes into hyper excitability.
It's like the brain has a specific tiny people
file on its hard drive. That's a great way to
put it. And all these different biological viruses,
vision loss, brainstem lesions, psychiatric imbalances,
or chemical withdrawals somehow accidentally
click on that exact same file. It is a really
useful way to conceptualize it. Neurologically
speaking, it points to a conserved neural pathway.
Meaning what? There must be a specific mechanism
of misfiring in the brain's visual and spatial
processing centers that defaults to this miniature
scale. It suggests that seeing tiny entities
isn't just a random glitch, but a pre -programmed
structural possibility within the human visual
cortex. It is wild to think about. And what further
supports that theory is that internal medical
conditions aren't the only way to trigger it.
Right. External chemicals can force the exact
same pathway open. They absolutely can. The literature
highlights that classical serotonergic psychedelics
like mescaline and DMT can sometimes induce these
specific visions. Which we kind of expect. We
expect psych... true but the sources also point
to rare instances of this being triggered by
standard pharmaceutical drugs and even industrial
chemicals which is far more surprising the medical
literature has documented these anomalies for
decades and they offer vital clues about how
delicate our neurochemistry actually is Yeah.
Looking at a report from the Medical Journal
of Australia published in 1973, there's a detailed
case of a patient experiencing what the doctors
called colored Lilliputian hallucinations. And
this was after taking amantadine, right? Yes,
amantadine. It's a medication typically prescribed
to manage Parkinson's disease symptoms or to
treat certain viral infections. It alters dopamine
release in the brain. Right. Then pushing even
further back, there's a fascinating paper in
the British Medical Journal from 1954 authored.
by a physician named Jay Todd. Ah, the trichloroethylene
case. Yeah. That is a classic. piece of medical
literature on this subject. It is. It details
a case of severe trichloroethylene poisoning.
And trichloroethylene isn't a medication. It's
a volatile industrial solvent often used for
degreasing metal parts. Nasty stuff. Very. The
patient was exposed to toxic levels of it, which
triggered a severe paranoid psychosis and embedded
right there in the clinical observation of his
symptoms. Lilacution hallucinations. The industrial
solvent literally forced the brain to render
tiny people into the patient's environment. Consider
the implications of that for a moment. A patient
with a brainstem lesion, a patient losing their
eyesight to macular degeneration, a patient taking
a Parkinson's medication, and a worker poisoned
by an industrial degreaser, they all end up experiencing
the exact same visual anomaly. We are clearly
still searching for the precise receptor or special
processing node that unites all these disparate
triggers. We are. But perhaps the most mysterious
trigger of all isn't an internal medical crisis
or a synthetic industrial chemical. No, it's
entirely biological. It grows out of the ground.
Here's where it gets really interesting. We have
to examine the mycological side of this phenomena,
because while amantadine and trichloroethylene
are rare accidental triggers, there is a whole
category of fungi in nature that reliably and
consistently induce these miniature visions.
This is the point where the deep dive transitions
from a medical curiosity into a genuine, ongoing
scientific mystery. The sources point to a few
culprits. There's Amanita muscaria. The iconic
red mushroom with white spots. The one you recognize
from folklore and fairy tales. And video games.
It contains musimol and ibotenic acid, and it's
known to occasionally cause size distortion and
Lilliputian hallucinations. But the real focal
point of this mystery is a group of hallucinogenic
boletes, specifically a species called Lanmaoa
asiatica. These boletes are found primarily in
Yunnan, China. It's a province known for its
incredibly high diversity of wild fungi. And
the local lore surrounding this specific mushroom
is deeply entrenched. A 2008 paper published
in the journal Economic Botany by mycologist
David Arora really dives into this cultural context.
Arora's work is fantastic here. Arora notes that
the colloquial name for these little people mushrooms
among the local population in Yunnan is Xiao
Ren Ren. Which translates directly to the little
people. The local population literally named
the mushroom after the specific hallucination
it caused. Which tells you a great deal about
the consistency of the pharmacological effect.
I mean, if you take a classic psychedelic like
psilocybin, the visual effects can vary wildly
from person to person. Right. You might get geometric
patterns, color enhancement, shifting environments.
But Lemawa Asiatica is so remarkably reliable
in producing this one highly specific hallucination
that it earned its name from. To give you all
a real sense of what consuming Zhou Ren actually
entails, the sources include a vivid dispatch
from a 2026 BBC report by... journalist Rachel
Neuer. She investigated the phenomenon right
there in UNM. She did, and she collected direct
anecdotes from people who had either intentionally
or accidentally consumed these boletes. People
stated quite plainly that they saw them on their
dishes when eating. Just visualize that scenario
for a second. You sit down for a meal, consume
some of this mushroom, and suddenly you are looking
down at your plate to find dozens of tiny humanoids
interacting with your food. Running around your
dick. Climbing over your chopsticks. It sounds
like a scene out of a fantasy novel. But the
hallucination maps onto the external environment
perfectly. And given how incredibly specific
these cultural anecdotes are and how reliably
the fungus produces the effect, you might assume
that modern science would have thoroughly documented
the mechanism by now. You would think so. We
should have isolated the exact active alkaloid,
mapped its binding affinity to human serotonin
or dopamine receptors, published comprehensive
pharmacological profiles. But we haven't. No.
That is the massive scientific gap we're looking
at. It is a complete blind spot in modern mycology.
How does a mushroom with such a famous, highly
targeted effect evade chemical analysis? To understand
the scope of this gap, we can look at a 2022
presentation given at the McKenna Academy of
Natural Philosophy by researchers Colin Domnauer
and Brian Dentinger. They compiled the historical
data on these psychoactive bleats, right? Yes.
And they pointed out that rumors of their effects
have been circulating in the scientific community
for over half a century. And the phenomenon isn't
just isolated to the mountains of Yunnan. Right.
There are independent ethnographic reports emerging
from completely different ecosystems. For instance,
a 2024 paper in the Antrocom Journal of Anthropology
by G. Samarini discusses a remarkably similar
phenomenon in Papua New Guinea. Where it's locally
associated with periods of mushroom madness.
Exactly. So you have two completely distinct
cultures separated by thousands of miles and
totally different ecologies, both describing
the exact same interaction. They consume a specific
type of bleat mushroom, and they are suddenly
surrounded by an abundance of colorful, diminutive
creatures navigating their physical space. The
cross -cultural consistency is undeniable. Yet,
despite these numerous, highly suggestive reports
spanning decades, Donauer and Dentinger made
a profound observation in their 2022 presentation.
They stated that the true taxonomic identity
of these psychoactive beliefs and the chemical
mechanism behind them remains a mycological mystery.
As of their research, there have still been no
rigorous scientific studies performed that conclusively
reveal the active chemical constituents of this
unstudied group of mushrooms. Which is crazy
to think about. We are living in an era of advanced
genomic sequencing and mass spectrometry. We
can break down the complex alkaloids of almost
any plant on Earth. But this specific Xiaorenren
mushroom, with its incredibly targeted little
people effect, is just sitting out there defying
modern analysis. Highlights the limitations of
Western clinical science when faced with complex,
localized biology. Fungi are notoriously difficult
to study. Very. Their active compounds can be
highly unstable once removed from the mushroom.
Or they might only be produced under very specific
environmental stresses unique to the soil ecology
of Yunnan or Papua New Guinea. The local and
indigenous knowledge, the people who coined the
term Xiaoran, runs decades, if not centuries,
ahead of peer -reviewed clinical. They have fully
integrated this phenomenon into their cultural
understanding while the laboratory scientists
are still struggling to get a stable chemical
extraction. Exactly. So what does this all mean
for us? We have covered a vast amount of territory
today. We really have. We started by defining
Lilliputian hallucinations, these incredibly
vivid visions of small humans or fantasy entities
perfectly grounded in the physics of your real
world environment. We explored the complex medical
spectrum that can cause them. From the brainstem
misfires of peduncular hallucinosis and the visual
starvation of Charles Bonnet syndrome. To the
acute chemical crises of alcohol withdrawal and
industrial solvent poisoning. And finally, we
waded into the mycological mystery of the little
people mushrooms in China and the mushroom. It
is. For you, the learner, the overarching takeaway
is a profound respect for the delicate, easily
disrupted machinery of your own mind. The reality
you perceive every single day is a tightly orchestrated
performance by your brain. And when just one
variable in that neural chemistry is altered,
whether by a medical condition or an unidentified
compound in a wild mushroom, the entire nature
of your reality can shift into something entirely
unrecognizable. It is a humbling reminder of
how fragile human perception truly is. It is.
But before we conclude, there is one final, provocative
thought to consider. Oh, right. There is a detail
from the very first paragraph of our source text
that we deliberately held back from our discussion
until now. We save the best for last. It's a
single clinical descriptor, but it fundamentally
changes the gravity of everything we just explored.
It really reframes the entire phenomenon. What
is it? The clinical text notes that Lilliputian
hallucinations are primarily visual in nature,
but it adds a critical caveat. They are also
often multimodal. Multimodal. For you listening,
consider the implications of that term in neuroscience.
Multimotor means the hallucination involves multiple
sensory pathways synchronizing simultaneously.
We spent this entire deep dive discussing the
visual aspect. Seeing tiny people running across
your dinner plate or hiding behind your coffee
cup. But if a hallucination is multimodal, your
brain isn't just generating an image. It is synchronizing
sight, sound, and touch to create a unified experience.
Meaning the illusion extends far beyond just
watching them from a distance. Exactly. Imagine
the scenario again. What if you weren't just
seeing tiny people on your dish, but your auditory
cortex was simultaneously generating the sound
of their high -pitched voices? Wow. What if you
could hear the microscopic scrape of their footsteps
on your porcelain plate as they moved? And taking
it a step further into the tactile realm. Right.
What if one of them walked off the plate and
onto your hand, and your brain generated the
physical sensation of its tiny weight pressing
into your skin? The brain is coordinating an
entire multisensory reality in real time. We
established earlier that these hallucinations
are perfectly grounded in your external environment,
mapping onto the physical geometry of the room.
Now add synchronized audio and physical touch
to that 3D mapping. If your brain is capable
of manufacturing a cohesive, interactive, multisensory
illusion of a tiny human, something you can see,
hear, and physically feel, all obeying the laws
of physics right in front of you. Well, wait.
No ellipses allowed. Let's frame that thought
clearly. Right. If your brain can do all of that,
how could you ever convince yourself it wasn't
real? It forces you to question the very fabric
of how you experience the world. Thank you so
much for joining us on this deep dive today.
We hope this exploration into the science of
Lilliputian hallucinations and the mystery of
the shower and run mushrooms gave you some incredible
new insights to mull over. Keep asking questions.
Keep challenging your reality, and we will catch
you next time.