Alice in Wonderland syndrome (AIWS): a research overview

Abstract

Background Alice in Wonderland syndrome (AIWS) is a rare neuropsychiatric condition characterized by distorted visual perceptions, body schema, and experience of time. A global overview of research on AIWS can inform future developments and clinical practice in this field. This bibliometric study aimed to analyze the characteristics of the global research landscape on AIWS. Methods Bibliometric data on AIWS related publications published until 2019 were retrieved from the Web of Science database. The data were analyzed using statistical and scientometric tools to evaluate the publication trends, key research domains, top contributing journals, institutions, and countries associated with AIWS-related research. Results A total of 125 published items were analyzed with a mean of 3 authors and 8.15 citations per document. Most articles were published after 2008, in medical journals focused on neuropsychiatric sciences, and most institutions affiliated with AIWS research were based on high-income countries. Major research domains associated with AIWS included visual disturbances, body image, migraine, infections, risk factors, and other clinical correlates. Several overarching domains were identified; however, clinical research on diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of AIWS is relatively limited. Conclusion The current research landscape informs a developing trend in AIWS research in selected regions and specialties. Future research should emphasize multidisciplinary and translational investigations on clinical and epidemiological areas through global collaborations that may advance the knowledge and practice on AIWS.

Global research on syndemics: A meta-knowledge analysis (2001-2020)

“…The corpus of the eligible literature was used for descriptive analysis, social network analysis, and conceptual structure analysis using measures that have been used in previous knowledge mapping studies [18,20,24,25]. The descriptive analyses on the key bibliometric characteristics such as total citations, publication trends, top ten cited articles, prolific authors, h-index and gindex of the authors, contributing journals, research institutions, affiliating countries of the authors were analyzed using Microsoft Excel [26] and R software (version 4.0.2) [27,28].…”

“…Therefore, this study could not include potential studies that may exist elsewhere. Although this limitation is very common across knowledge mapping studies [18,20,24], we encourage methodologists and other scholars to continue intellectual discourses on how the global knowledge community can find opportunities to harmonize citations data across databases. This is extremely challenging as journals are not universally indexed, and databases do not contain bibliographic data on all key variables of interest.…”

The Alice in Wonderland Syndrome: A Mixed-Method Exploratory Analysis of AIWS Experiences

“…This could impact the generalizability of findings on AIWS due to partiality leaning toward certain contributing countries and authors for published data; and to certain nationalities or language-based skills for forum posts. Indeed, the English language was used to communicate in posts from the online support community, and regarding scientific literature, the top contributing countries were the US, Japan, Italy, Germany, Spain, France, Turkey, Australia, the Netherlands, the UK, Canada, Israel and Taiwan (Hossain, 2020). This means that populations from many countries in Africa, Asia, South America and northern Europe were underrepresented.…”

“…In 1955, psychiatrist John Todd paralleled Alice's experiences of "hyperschematia, hyposchematia, derealization, depersonalization, and somatopsychic duality" (Todd, 1955) with the somesthetic, visual and time distortions described by six patients, grouping these symptoms under the term "the syndrome of Alice in Wonderland" (AIWS). In the 70 years since Todd coined the term AIWS, 253 case descriptions have been published in the literature, with comprehensive systematic reviews (Lanska et al, 2013;Blom, 2016;Mastria et al, 2016) and a research overview (Hossain, 2020) contributing to the study of this rare perceptual disorder.…”

“…In addition to nosographic and developmental differences, there is still a scarcity of cases studied since 1955, despite publication trends reflecting an increased interest in AIWS over the last decade, with a peak of 17 publications in 2018 (Hossain, 2020). Population studies are nevertheless crucial in providing the awareness, early diagnosis, intervention for symptom management and treatment options for individuals with AIWS.…”