14 DAY TRIAL // A report published in the medical journal The Lancet details the case of a woman who, in July 2011, sought medical help at a psychiatric clinic in the Netherlands and told doctors there that she was seeing people's faces turn into dragons before her very eyes.
The woman, whose identity was not disclosed by the medical experts who treated her, also saw images of dragons forming in electrical sockets, on computer screens, sometimes even on perfectly ordinary plain white walls.
During nighttime, when the lights in her home were off, she would see numerous dragons hidden in the darkness, staring at her. The patient described the beasts as being black with bright eyes. She even talked about them having abnormally long and pointy ears.
Most of the time, these hallucinations of dragons only took a few minutes to manifest. Thus, the patient told the doctors who handled her case that, although she could perceive faces as what they were when she first saw them, they eventually turned into dragons.
“She could perceive and recognize actual faces, but after several minutes they turned black, grew long, pointy ears and a protruding snout, and displayed a reptiloid skin and huge eyes in bright yellow, green, blue, or red,” reads the report presenting this case.
A possible explanation for this rare medical condition
To diagnose the 52-year-old woman, medical experts scanned her brain and also performed a series of neurological examinations. They couldn't find anything physically wrong with her and so diagnosed her with a psychiatric disorder called prosopometamorphopsia.
As explained by specialists, faces and other objects around people suffering from this rare condition appear more or less distorted to them. In the case of this 52-year-old patient, the visual hallucinations were severe and took the form of dragons.
Although the exact brain abnormalities that cause prosopometamorphopsia are yet to be identified, experts say that there appears to be a connection between this disorder and the use of hallucinogenic drugs. Strokes and tumors can also trigger the condition.
Evidence at hand indicates that the condition correlates with damage to a brain area that helps with face recognition and that is known as the fusiform gyrus. However, a clear link between damage to this specific part of the human brain and prosopometamorphopsia is yet to be established.
To address the 52-year-old woman's symptoms, doctors administered her an anti-dementia medication called rivastigmine, Metro informs. She responded well to the drug and made significant progress. In fact, word has it she's managed to hold a job for 3 years now.