Capgras Syndrome is one of the most mindboggling mental disorders ever discovered. Picture this, you are having dinner with your spouse, and you talk and giggle like you would normally. Then later on, something terrifying happens. You are involved in a car crash and knocked unconscious. You are driven to a hospital. You wake up and everything appears to be normal… however, you look up, glance at your spouse, and exclaim with stricken disbelief, “you are an imposter”.

The Capgras delusion is one of many misidentification syndromes in which patients believe that their loved ones, friends, pets and even objects have been replaced by identical copies; they are imposters.

Seeing is Believing

An extraordinary characteristic of Capgras patients is that when they speak with their spouse over the phone, they can still recognise them. They speak to them as they normally would, with love and affection, but as soon as they see them, they immediately think, “imposter”! They claim that this imposter looks “identical” to their real spouse, but that it could not possibly be them.

Inside the Brain

This enigmatic disorder can be solved by looking at what has been damaged in the brain. There are two brain regions involved: the Fusiform Gyrus when you see a face, and the amygdala which deals with emotional responses. The amygdala induces the accompanying feelings after you perceive a familiar face. So there is a difference between seeing your loved one, and feeling that warm fuzzy feeling inside because you recognise them as your significant other.

The pathway that connects the Fusiform Gyrus to the amygdala is severed, cut, broken, due to the brain injury, so a loved one is recognised as familiar, but is not felt so. To resolve this paradox, you resolve that the person must be an imposter!