Researchers studying Lanmaoa asiatica have found that the mushroom is associated with a distinctive hallucination: seeing tiny people moving through the surrounding environment. Reports of the effect come from southwestern China and the Philippines, where people have known for centuries that eating the mushroom raw or partly cooked can trigger the visions.
A study by researchers at the University of Utah examined mushroom samples from Yunnan, China, and the Philippines. DNA analysis showed that mushrooms given different names in the two regions belong to the same species. The researchers also found that they do not contain psilocybin or ibotenic acid, two compounds associated with hallucinations.
The visions resemble a phenomenon known as Lilliputian hallucination, in which people see unusually small human figures against a realistic background. French psychiatrist Raoul Leroy coined the term in 1909, drawing on the miniature inhabitants of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. Similar experiences have been reported in connection with conditions including alcohol withdrawal, dementia, schizophrenia, Alice in Wonderland syndrome and macular degeneration.
The mushroom’s effects raise questions about why people who encounter this type of hallucination report such similar figures. The article notes that psychedelic experiences involving substances such as psilocybin can vary with a person’s mindset, culture and experience, while Lilliputian hallucinations have comparatively consistent features.
This also connects to neuroscience research suggesting that perception is not simply a direct reading of sensory information. The brain uses incoming signals to build predictions about the world and revises them as needed. Neuroscientist Anil Seth describes perception as a “controlled hallucination”: a constructed experience that is usually closely anchored to sensory input.
Lanmaoa asiatica does not mean that people are sharing one vision at the same time. Rather, unrelated people in different places and periods have reported similar experiences. The article presents this recurring pattern as a reason to examine how memory, expectation and perception shape what people experience as real; it does not establish why the mushroom produces the visions.
Sources: Psychology Today.