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    Weird Capgras Syndrome

    There’s an interesting mental disorder called Capgras syndrome. It’s a rare mental disorder usually suffered by people who have had strokes or head trauma.

    These people claim that everyone they know is not actually that person and has been replaced by an imposter. For example, after suffering the trauma, the sufferer wakes up and sees their family in their room. But the patient says that none of them are their family, they have all been replaced by look-alikes. One is quoted as saying, “Doctor, this woman looks exactly like my mother but she isn’t, she’s an imposter.” There is even one case where a sufferer made this claim of his pet poodle. However, if they hear a familiar voice on the phone, they immediately recognize it and suffer no delusions about imposters. The disorder is linked solely to visual areas.

    Why does this happen? The best hypothesis is that the connection between the visual areas of the brain and emotional response centers (the amygdala and the limbic system) has been cut by the trauma.

    When you see a familiar face, you have some kind of emotional response to it. According to this hypothesis, patients with Capgras don’t feel anything, which leads them to the conclusion that the person can’t be the one they know.

    The nice thing about this hypothesis (unlike Freudian ones) is that it’s testable. When shown pictures of loved ones, normal people have large galvanic skin response. Capgras suffers don’t, exactly as you’d suspect if they lacked emotional responses to visual stimuli.

    What I find interesting is that when the brain receives no emotional response to a stimulus to which it used to respond, it assumes the stimulus is a fake. It’s the only conclusion that the brain can draw given the facts. The brain is quite a remarkable organ.

    Source: http://stupac2.blogspot.com/2006/10/...-syndrome.html
    “If I asked you to have sex with me, would the answer to that question be the same as the answer to this question?”


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    Argyll's Apprentice TwoPlAnKs's Avatar
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    Default Re: Capgras Syndrome

    i did first year psychology at uni (we had to pick 3 things, one or two compulsary ones for most degrees then free choice for the others and psychology is almost impossible to fail, and vaguely interesting) and the one part of it that i really liked was a 12 week block of 1 lecture a week on biopsychology and how the parts of the brain are connected up, and what goes wrong when these connections break

    one type of epillepsy i think it was could be treated by cutting the main communications between the halfs of the brain. its not possible to imagine having 2 brains because each brain can only imagine itself because it isnt connected to the other one. each side of the brain controls the opposite side of the body, eg. right side controls left arms and legs and eyes and such. processing is done in a particular side, so for example the side that produces speech is what affects what a person says. one of the only ways the brains can communicate is through talking and the other listening through its ear, but then the other side cant talk to speak back so its one way. the people who have had this operation dont feel any different apart from a few things where the brains disagree. a famous example is a patient who's talking side was arguing with his wife and that brain used its arm to reach out and strike her, but the other side put its arm out to stop it.

    people get the part of their brain that recognises faces cut off too and cant recognise people properly, apart from their clothes and how they walk and such. its apparently really difficult to actually know who people are in the street if you cant see their face even although you might think you can easily recognise most people you know quite well

    that article finishes on a good sentence, "The brain is quite a remarkable organ."
    "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." - John Gilmore

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