Capgras Syndrome : Forgetting VIPs in your Life.

Have you ever had the feeling that the friend you have known for ages may not be the one who's standing in front of you?

Weird, right? you are pretty sure the person is not your friend, and yet everyone is telling you that he or she is.

Before you start debating with everyone else and insists on your thoughts, let me tell you about a certain theory that had caught my attention these past few days -- CAPGRAS DELUSION THEORY or the Capgras Syndrom

The syndrome is a disorder in which a certain person believes that a friend or a relative has been replaced by an identical-looking impostor. This is classified under the delusional misidentification syndrome, a certain kind of delusional beliefs that involves misidentification of people, places or objects. It may be acute, transient or chronic. 

This is commonly seen in patients diagnosed with schizophrenia, although it can also occur with brain injury and dementia. 


One of the earliest study regarding the cause of Capgras Delusion suggested that prospagnosia may be have caused it as shown by the study of brain-injury patients. In this condition, the patient cannot recognize faces consciously but are able to recognize other types of visual objects. 


Recent studies shows that although these patients can consciously recognize the faces, they do not show the usual autonomic emotional arousal response (Ellis, 1997). Further, patients can still feel emotions and recognize familiar faces but can't feel emotions when recognizing those faces which are familiar to him. The study states a hypothesis that the origin of Capgras syndrome is the disconnection between the temporal lobe (part of the brain in charge in the recognition of faces) and the limbic system (emotions).


Since the patient could not put memories and feelings, he believed objects in a photograph are new everytime he sees it, though they normally should have triggered feelings (Ramachandran).