SYSK Selects: How Capgras Syndrome Works

of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. I'm pretty sure the person with me is always is Charles W. Chuck Bryant, cap grasp. Yeah, I think it's cup Craw because it's a Frenchman who was the first person to describe Jerry. Just call it crap Cross. We're all kinds of screwed up, and I'm not going to say cop crawl the whole time, so we'll just say kept grads obnoxious. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like, we're not in Quebec, that's right, um right.

This is basically are our Invasion of the Body Snatchers episode past that unless we do one on the invasion of the body snatchers. That's kind of the deal, though.

We're talking today about a very very strange and once thought to be very uncommon and rare disorder um a delusional disorder, a delusional misidentification disorder, to be specific, where the sufferer believes that the people in his or her life, people very close to him, have all been replaced by impostors, that they're there, Like I'm looking at you right now, Chuck, and you look just like Chuck, and you're doing a great job with the voice and everything, but like I

don't want to say it, and I don't want to look you in the eye, but like you're obviously not Chucking. What's going on? We all feel that about each other occasionally, but imagine like that all the time, Like, how would you just not lose faith in the reality of anything if you thought, first of all, how are people? How are they coming up with great impostors like this? Who is they? Why are they doing this? Why you? Is

it just you? Or is the whole world impostors? Yeah, it's it's like there's a lot of really weighty questions involved with this, and as a result, science has been trying to really figure out the mystery behind it and has failed thus far. Yeah, and you know we we already should say. It's not only difficult on the person, but it's difficult on the person being misidentified as well. And you don't really don't hear a lot about that.

I read a bunch of articles on this and only one said, and don't forget if someone if your wife thinks that you're an impostor, it's really tough on you as well. Yeah, that is kind of overlooked, Yeah, very much. So. Yeah, so this is actually kind of a newish phenomenon as

far as description goes. UM Dr cop Craw and Dr Rebu last show, UM described Madame m who believed that she had as many as eighty husbands, all of them the same, looking the same, but they were all imposters and she never could get close to him because um, eventually they would just kind of leave and be replaced by a new one. And she was utterly convinced of this.

And I'm sure at the time they thought, what this lady is just nuts, But then the more people did research, the more they found and I couldn't find any good stats on how rare it is undered thousands, and that means nothing. So the one I saw it was in two thousand or six five. I believe the estimate was between one point three to four point one percent of all psychiatric patients have cap craw And you can probably say that if that's close, then that's probably close to

the general population. Because if you believe that the people who are closest to you in your life are impostors and you're accusing them as such, they're probably gonna force you to go seek psychiatric help. So that would probably be a pretty close statistic for the society for society at large. And where you really see it though, is in Alzheimer's patients. The statistic was between two and thirty percent of Alzheimer's patients possibly suffer from cop crop or

crab grass. But it isn't that just Alzheimer's. No, not necessarily Alzheimer's. You know that's that can be forgetfulness, Um, that can be uh yeah, I guess disorientation. This is like you're accusing your husband, your wife, your son, your daughter of being somebody else, somebody posing as them. Okay, that makes sense. So this is different than something we've covered face blindness before, Right, we talked about it came up in something else, but yeah, maybe we did do

a whole podcast on it. I'm not sure. But that is uh, proso pregnosia, and this is not prospregnosia. That's and you can see your face over and over and over and still you just don't know who it is. Right in this case, you know, like, hey, that's Josh,

I'm looking at him. I know that face. But um, they're they've done studies with a skin conduct conductance is when they they're basically measuring the amount of perspiration on your face, which is a it's a measure of the limbics system being active, which is in turn a measure of your emotions going off. Yeah, with the idea being that if if you're sweating a little bit on the face, then that is a physiological or psychological queue that like, hey,

look at this picture of your mother. I would recognize that as my mother, and maybe my face will sweat a little bit. Right. If you are what's called a normal if you have propagnosia, um, you will not recognize that picture intellectually consciously, but your skin conductivity will go off. So that means that the emotional cue is still triggered even though you don't know who you're looking at. That's

the opposite of studies of um cap cross syndrome. Yeah, they'll see a picture and they will not have It's basically like they're looking at a picture of a complete stranger, right, and and they don't have they they don't have that recognized the face right exactly, but they don't have an emotional response. Here's the thing. They recognize the face enough to know this is my dad. They are rational enough.

That's the other thing too. Other than this the rational it's what's called a mono thematic syndrome, where you have one delusion and it's a whopper and it basically consumes your whole life. So the irrational otherwise and the rational enough to say, Okay, this is my dad I'm looking at, but I don't feel any kind of emotional stimulation from seeing my dad and I should and because I don't,

this is an imposter. That's what they think is going on. Yeah, one of the common things that the people with the syndrome will say is that like their soul is gone or their soul is missing. That's a different syndrome. No, no no, no, that that that's that's linked to cap Graw because they'll recognize the other person. Yeah, okay, the person they're looking at is that's not my mother. That's not there. There's right,

would sense my mother's soul. Right. So what they think then is that when we this kind of proves that we make memories two ways that are connected. That we we take in stimuli, right, like visual stimuli. I'm looking at you and at the same time I'm looking at Chuck, and I like Chuck. So I'm also kind of taking note that same memory that I'm forming of the visual representation of you also has an attendant um emotion happiness. I like you, So when I see you again, I

should feel that same thing happiness. I'm glad to see Chuck. That is a full memory. With cop Craw, people who suffer that they're missing the emotional aspect and they have the recognition and they vs. Rama Shan Drawn I think I said as name right. He came up in the Mirror Neurons episode. It's just as brilliant genius dude, you

see san Diego go as text. Maybe I think so, um, he he said, Probably what's happening then, is you have a secondary lesion or secondary damage where your your right brain is very analytical and it checks your left brain, which wants to explain everything away. And if that right brain analysis is damaged, then the left brain can do go to whatever links it wants to to explain away

strange phenomenon. In this case, if you have that disconnect between the UM sensory input and emotional aspect of a memory in conjunction with a loss of the right brain checking your delusions, then the left brain is able to go off and say, oh, well it must be an impostor. Yeah, well the emotional side wins out essentially as an explanation to sort of reconcile those two things. Yeah, because it's missing. It's not deluded. The person is not delusional. It's there's

an impostor. Yeah. You know what's really weird is UM. Another one of the characteristics sometimes is it can extend to animals and objects as well, so it's not always just people. They can you know, that's my dog, but it's not. I know that chair is not the original chair. Someone came in here and replaced it with an exact replica UM, and they're not hallucinating you know these they're aware of all this stuff. Yeah, and I mean imagine the paranoia that that would generate in you, like who

moved the chair? Who replaced this chair? What's the deal? And Um, they found that it's it is co morbid with things like Alzheimer's and schizophrenia as well and other psychotic disorders. Yeah, and it's it's usually your spouse to UM. One article I had said, it's always your spouse is how it starts. Oh yeah, yeah, but I don't know if that's quite right. That seems a little willing nilly to say every single time it starts with your spouse. Hmm.

So let's talk about some of the explanations that science has come up with UM since it was first described in it was right in Freud's wheelhouse. Oh yes, So the psychoanalysts had their had the first crack at it, and they swung and missed. UM. They basically said that it was a repressed edifics or electric complex, right, yeah, and that that was kind of poopoo pretty quickly. Um. They were saying that you know that you're just trying

to resolve guilt about your circumstances. UM, identifying your parents it look alike and then pretty quickly scientists and you know that it probably doesn't have to do with repressed feelings in this case, done done everybody. Kenneth took his ball and went home. Yeah he yeah, he's really been kicked to the has he Yeah, even by psychology. They've turned their backs on him. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, psychodynamic approach, sorry Freudians. Um, that was the psychodynamic approach, and that that's,

like we said, has kind of been pooh pooed. Well, that was the psychodynamic approach, was the one where it's repressed feelings. Fordian approach was that you wanted to have sex with your mom, so you so you resolve that the guilt from that by saying, my mom, you're not my mom, you're an imposter. So, but I want to have sex with you. And that's okay, I mean the Glenn Miller version of the mood, and I feel really guilty. Um. Again,

again we should say that one was thrown out. A lot of researchers think that it's a result of an actual organic cause, something physically wrong with the brain, which makes sense to me. Um. They look for lesions, um cerebral dysfunction, signs of atrophy, and like you mentioned, it is also morbid a lot of time with psychotic disorders, um epilepsy, even Alzheimer's and you mentioned schizophrenia, which makes sense.

I think bipolar is on there as well. Yeah, so other doctors say, you know what, it might be a combination of these things like physical and cognitive causes, Like you have some sort of organic damage, but then you're you're mentally you're rationalizing it inappropriately, like you can't accept that you're delusional because of any sort of brain damage.

You're projecting it's everyone else is an impostor. So that would be a combination of mental and physical And again it's your brain trying to explain something that doesn't quite add up in your head. Yeah, so what's clear is there's a breakdown and communication. There is UM somewhere in the brain. It's they Ramashan drown Um and his partner. I don't want to just call out the star, but Hirstein and Ramschandron did a paper in nineties seven that

was pretty interesting. They consider it a problem of memory manage mint wherein like you or I, if if our brain is to be UM, if it's a computer, look it as a computer, right, UM, when we see somebody or meet somebody, we create a file on that person, and then when we encounter that person again, we access the same file and then add to it. But it's

the same file. What Rama Shawn John and hers steam we're proposing was that, uh, people who have cop craw make a new file every time for the same person. But there's also there has to be some sort of link between these files. I don't think that's necessarily an apt description. I think there are more onto it with it's just missing. It's the same file. It's just missing

something that the patient senses is missing. There's a void there and they're saying, well, I'm missing something because you're an imposter and I don't really know you, like some sort of emotional identification marker. UM. This is really interesting to me. They have studies that showed that UM blind people. It can actually extend to their voice of the person, but other times they've shown that they recognized them on

the phone but not in person. Yeah, that was a dude named DS that Rama Shandron, So it can be both. He could his was UM. The only modality is what they call it for his UM. His delusion was visual, so like when he saw his parents, his dad was not his dad, and actually his dad was pretty cool.

His dad. One day, um DS was a thirty year old Brazilian guy who got into a car accident and started suffering cap Cross syndrome, and um his parents started to get really worried didn't know what to do, so his dad one day came in and declared that the man who had been replacing him as an impostor, he had sent him away to China and he would never return.

And I'm your father, and I'm back, And it worked for a couple of weeks and then it just went back the The guy became convinced that no the impostors back, he had cap Cross syndrome, so add that he came to believe that he himself is an impostor. And he asked his mother, when the real DS returns, will you still love me and treat me as your friend? Can I still stay around? And she said, I don't know who you are. So this guy thought, um everything, including himself,

was an impostor. I thought there were two Panamas that he'd been too recently, thought there were two United States. There were doubles for everything, and UM when he talked to his parents on the phone though that he didn't suffer that delusion. It was strictly dad, where like, there's this other guy here pretending to be you. Yeah, oh I I don't know he would like he didn't hide

it from what I understand. Interesting, which is something that's probably healthy if you have cap Greff syndrome, because there is UM. There have been instances of violence with cap gress syndrome. Yeah. This one guy thought a robot had replaced his father, so he decapitated his father to look for the robot inside UM. A woman in a mental institution killed another patient because she thought that she was

going to kill her double, her daughter's double. So she was actually protecting the impostor from somebody who she didn't necessarily think was an impostor. It's very interesting. So as far as treating this, there's you know, since it's pretty rare, there's not a lot of you know, prescribed regular treatments. UM. Sometimes it goes away, it doesn't really. Yeah. Sometimes if it's like a physical brain trauma, uh, you can re establish that connection and and things start firing correctly again,

and it just kind of disappears. I wonder when you come out of it, Chuck, like, do you feel like, Wow, that was really crazy what I used to think? Or do you feel like all the impostors have left in all of my families back now? Oh, I don't know. That's weird. Another thing that they say, if it's linked to a mental disorder, sometimes it can be helped by medication that would also help that mental disorder. Um, but they're really for most people, there is no treatment, uh,

and there is no cure. I think it's just probably a long series of of sessions on the couch, you know what I'm saying. But I mean, how do you forge trust that's it, you know, in somebody when you which is required to say, Okay, it's me, everyone's not impostors. I have a false belief when ultimately, if the closer you get to, say like your therapist, the more likely you are to come to believe that they're going to

be replaced by an impostor. This this is a sad condition. Yeah, so let's talk about some other sad conditions too that are similar. I mean, it's a it's a delusional misidentification syndrome. It also falls under the umbrella of reduplicative paraamnesia. Wow. Uh yeah, it's a mouthful. So another similar one is the Fregoli system and it was named after Leopoldo Fregoli. He was a quick change artist. And that leads you to believe that people around you are people in disguise,

so not replacements. But hey, I know that you should be my dentist, but you're really my sister in disguise as my dentist. Yeah, it's like over recognition. Like everyone in your life that you see and interact with on a daily basis, like your your dentist, or somebody on the subway or whatever, is actually somebody very close to you dressed up in disguise. Cotard syndrome. That is a belief that you are missing body parts or you are

emotionally dead. And sometimes they think like my heart doesn't beat, or I don't have bones, or I don't exist any longer. Yeah, and it's not I mean, these are people that really feel the way. It's pretty much like the psychological manifestation of an existential crisis. Yeah, like you think your brain is rotting inside of you and like you're dead. I mean, you don't feel anything. What about inter metamorphosis. This one's odd.

It's kind of like, um, it's kind of like cop grass syndrome, but it's it's more complete like the and it's not imposters. It's people close to you switching, just your brothers now your father psychologically and physically, the whole ball of ax. Like apparently you see them, like when you're interacting with your father, you see and think you're interacting with your brother if they've switched. Yes, wow. Indeed.

The thing about this though, and you kind of get this from the Ramashan dram paper, which I strongly recommend reading. It's it's only like nine pages. It's pretty interesting stuff is every once in a while he comes, he pulls back and it's like, can you f him leave? The brain? Yeah, it is incredible what what it can do, and when

it malfunctions, man can ever malfunction. But he's pointing out that like through these really really rare cases, Um, you can start to get a glimpse into how we form memories and how we retrieve memories, and to better understand human consciousness through you know, these these very unique unusual patients. Yeah, i'd like to think at the end of our run.

You know, in fifty years, we're gonna have a nice body of work on the brain for people to to pick and choose and uh, you know, from like alien hand to cap craw to how memories are formed and how you taste and myths on the brain. Yeah, it's just pretty amazing stuff. I know, what did you taste? It tastes delicious. It's it's our I think it's probably our favorite topic. Did you just say fifty years? Yeah? Man, hey,

I going for you. Have you seen the impostor Ah? Yeah, I think I talked about it before to this good documentary. Good documentary, Go check that one out. Yeah. Uh. And you got anything else on cap craw No, sir, Okay, cap craw, crab grass, cap grass, COUDI, gras butter all of those things. Type them into the search bar how stuff works dot com and it may or may not

bring up this article. At least a couple of them will. Uh. And since I said, um, search bar, let's have a let's take a message break and now listener maw yes, buddy, I'm gonna call this one. Uh. Email from a former Mormon, former Mormon foreman the for Mormon. Uh, Hey, guys and Jarious listen to the podcast on marriage want to give

you some information on Mormon marriage. Though the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints no longer practices nor supports the secular act of marrying multiple spouses, men can still be sealed to multiple women. And I'll try and explain sealing view. But even though I was raised a member of the church, the details are a little bit fuzzy because he's been out for a little while. Uh. Those ceiling is related to marriage and takes place at

the same time. It is a separate ordinance. Where marriage insures that a couple receives all the legal benefits promised by the government. Sealing insures all of the religious benefits promised by the Lord. That was a good preacher, Thank you. The two main benefits that I can remember are one, the sealed persons will be together for all time and eternity. And to the sealed persons will enter into the highest level of heaven of the three, it's just three levels.

I found out a man can be sealed to multiple women when my parents went through their divorce. Even though they went through the legal process of divorce, they never had their sealing nullified. When my dad remarried, he was sealed to my stepmother and to my biological mother at the same time. Later on, when my mom remarried, she had to nullify her sealing to my father because women are not allowed to be sealed to multiple men, only

men to multiple women. Furthermore, my new stepfather was sealed to his late wife when he married my mother, and he still is to this day. Yeah. My intentions aren't to bash the church in any way, um, but that fact that the fact that men can be sealed to multiple women is a little known fact that most people inside and outside the church. Uh. Though the church's practice of polygamy doesn't bother me anymore, educated consenting adults should be allowed to be with the ones they love in

my opinion, and that's his opinion. I am bothered by the fact that they don't inform people of their policy on being sealed to multiple spouses. That's all I've got. Guys on Mormons and marriage. No longer remember the church, but I still find the religion and culture very fascinating. A podcast on how the Church of Jesus rise oft Laturday Saints works would be amazing, and that is from Ethan Ethan Clark. Yeah, long lost brother, and we've been asked by many Mormons and members of that church to

do one on their religion. So we've got a whole we have a whole queue of ones that we have to do that's kind of piling up. It's like before we hit the fifty year mark. It's just like one after the other, the never Ending Cycle. We will add it to the cycle, The never Ending Cycle starring a tray You. If you want to suggest a podcast and accompany it with a story or some outsiders former insider analysis, Um, we want to hear it, you can tweet to us at s y s K podcast, join us on Facebook,

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