June 11, 2013 • 24 mins
There is an extremely rare condition where the sufferer is convinced that everyone around him is an impostor posing as their friends and family. Learn about the neurology behind this strange and sad mental disorder in this episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
I'm pretty sure the person with me is always is
Charles W. Tuck Bryant cap grasp Eva. Yeah, I think
(00:22):
it's cup Crows because it's a Frenchman who was the
first person to describe. Jerry just called it crap crass.
We're all kinds of screwed up, and I'm not going
to say cop crawl the whole time, so we'll just
say cap gradsbnxious. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like we're
not in Quebec, that's right, umque right. This is basically
(00:43):
our our Invasion of the Body Snatchers episode podcast 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 uncommon
and rare disorder um a delusional disorder, a delusional misidentification disorder,
(01:09):
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have all been replaced by impostors, that they're there, like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?
(01:31):
I think 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
(01:55):
it just you? Or it's the whole world? 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
(02:17):
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 just kind of overlooked, Yeah, very much. So. Yeah,
so this is actually kind of a newish phenomenon as
far as description goes. UM Dr Copgraw and Dr Rebu
(02:40):
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 impostors 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 really convinced of this. And
(03:01):
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
(03:21):
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
(03:44):
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 craw or
crab grass. But isn't that just all timers. No, not
necessarily Alzheimers. You know, let's it can be forgetfulness. Um,
(04:05):
that can be uh, yeah, I guess this orientation. This
is the you're accusing your husband, your wife, your son,
your daughter of being somebody else, somebody posing it is 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
(04:27):
is uh, proso pregnosia, and this is not proso pregnocia.
That's when you 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 they've done studies with skin conduct conductance
(04:47):
is when 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 you 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
(05:10):
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
(05:31):
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
emognized face right exactly, but they don't have an emotional response.
Here's the thing. They recognize the face enough to know
(05:54):
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
(06:15):
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 thing 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,
(06:35):
that that's that's linked to cap GRAB because they'll recognize
the other person. Yea, the person they're looking at is
that's not my mother, that's not there. There 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
(06:57):
in stimuli, right, like visual stimula. 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.
(07:20):
That is a full memory with cop craw people who
suffer that they're missing the emotional aspect and they have
the recognition and the vs rama Shan drawn I think
I said his name right. He came up in the
Mirror Neurons episode. It's just a brilliant genius dude as
text maybe I think so, um he he said. Probably.
(07:44):
What's happening then is you have a secondary lesion, 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 that wants
(08:05):
to to explain a way 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
(08:29):
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
(08:53):
in here and replaced it an exact replica. Um. And
they're not hallucinating, you know, these they're a air 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
(09:13):
Alzheimer's and schizophrenia as well and other psychotic disorders. Yeah,
and it's it's usually your spouse to um. One article,
are it 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. So let's talk about
some of the explanations that science has come up with,
(09:33):
um since it was first described in it was right
in Freud's wheelhouse. Oh yes, So the psycho analysts had
their had the first crack at it and they swung
and missed. Um. They basically said that it was a
repressed edipits or electric complex, right yeah, and that that
was kind of pooped pretty quickly. Um. They were saying that,
you know that you're just trying to resolve guilt about
(09:54):
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.
(10:18):
Yeah yeah, uh psychodynamic approach. Sorry, Um, that was the
psychodynamic approach, and that that's like we said, it's kind
of been pooh pooed. Well, that was the psychodynamic approach,
was the one where it's repressed feelings. Freudian approach was
that you wanted to have sex with your mom, so
you so you resolved that the guilt from that by saying,
(10:41):
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 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.
(11:03):
They look for lesions, UM, cerebral dysfunction, signs of atrophy,
and like you mentioned, it is also co 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,
(11:25):
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. But that would be a combination
(11:48):
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 Rama Shandron,
Um and his partner. I don't want to just call
out the star, but Hrstein and Rama Shandron did a
(12:09):
paper in nineties seven that was pretty interesting. They consider
it a problem of memory management, 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,
(12:32):
we access the same file and then add to it.
But it's the same file. What Rama Shandron and her
Stein 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
app description. I think there are more onto it with
(12:54):
it's just missing. It's the same file it's just missing
something that the patient senses is missing, the 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
(13:16):
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 Shan Dron. It can be both.
He could his was UM. The only modality is what
they call it. For his UM. His delusion was visual.
(13:38):
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 the DS was a thirty
year old Brazilian guy who got into a car accident
and started suffering cap gross 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,
(14:01):
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 bad
that he came to believe that he himself was an impostor,
and he asked his mother, when the real DS returns,
(14:23):
what 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 to recently, thought there were two
United States, there were doubles for everything, and um. When
(14:43):
he talked to his parents on the phone, though that
he didn't suffer that delusion. It was strict dad, where like,
there's this other guy here pretending to be you. 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 Grafs syndrome, because there
(15:06):
is UM. There have been instances of violence with cap
Cress 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
(15:30):
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. Yeah. Sometimes if it's
(15:51):
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.
(16:12):
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
(16:32):
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
(16:52):
you are to come to believe that they are going
to be replaced by an impostor. This is a sad condition.
So let's talk about some mother Stag conditions too that
are similar. I mean, it's a it's a delusional misidentification syndrome.
It also falls under the umbrella of reduplicative para amnesia
(17:13):
in a while, 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
(17:34):
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. Coutard syndrome. That
(17:59):
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. And it's not I mean, these
are people that really feel this way. It's pretty much
like the psychological manifestation of an existential crisis. Yeah, like
(18:21):
do 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 graft 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
(18:44):
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 Drum
paper which I strongly recommend reading. It's it's only like
(19:06):
nine pages. It's pretty interesting stuff is Every once in
a while he comes he pulls back and he's like,
can you f and believe the brain? Yeah? It is
incredible what what it can do? And when it malfunctions? Man,
can it ever a malfunction? But he's pointing out that, like,
through these really really rare cases, um, you can start
(19:30):
to get a glimpse in 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 pick
and choose and you know, from like alien hand to
(19:53):
cap craw to how memories are formed and how you
taste and the brain. Yeah, it's just pretty amazing stuff.
I know you take it, taste 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 too. It's good documentary. Good documentary.
(20:15):
Go check that one out. Yeah. Uh, And you got
anything else on cap graw No, sir, okay, cap craw
crab grass cap grass, COUDI gras butter all 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
(20:36):
I said, um, search bar, let's have a let's take
a message break and now listener, Yes, buddy, I'm gonna
call this one. Email from a former Mormon, former Mormon
(20:58):
foreman before Norman. Uh. Hey, guys and Jarious listening 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 mirroring multiple spouses, men can still be sealed
to multiple women. And I'll try and explain sealing to you,
(21:19):
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.
(21:40):
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 the multiple women when
my parents went through their divorce. Even though they went
(22:01):
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
(22:23):
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, the church's
practice of polygamy doesn't bother me anymore. Educated consenting adults
(22:44):
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 in marriage. No longer remember the church,
but I still find the religion and culture very fascinating.
A podcast on how the Church of Jesus Christ at
(23:05):
Saturday Scenes works would be amazing. And that is from
Ethan even Clark. Yeah, long lost brother, and we've been
asked by many uh 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
(23:28):
before we hit the fifty year mark. Let's just like
one after any other, the never ending cycle. We will
add it to the cycle, the never ending cycle starting
a tray you Uh. If you want to suggest a
podcast and accompany it with the story or some outsiders
former insider analysis, um, we want to hear it. You
(23:50):
can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast,
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(24:15):
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Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
I'm pretty sure the person with me is always is
Charles W. Tuck Bryant cap grasp Eva. Yeah, I think
(00:22):
it's cup Crows because it's a Frenchman who was the
first person to describe. Jerry just called it crap crass.
We're all kinds of screwed up, and I'm not going
to say cop crawl the whole time, so we'll just
say cap gradsbnxious. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like we're
not in Quebec, that's right, umque right. This is basically
(00:43):
our our Invasion of the Body Snatchers episode podcast 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 uncommon
and rare disorder um a delusional disorder, a delusional misidentification disorder,
(01:09):
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?
(01:31):
I think 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
(01:55):
it just you? Or it's the whole world? 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
(02:17):
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 just kind of overlooked, Yeah, very much. So. Yeah,
so this is actually kind of a newish phenomenon as
far as description goes. UM Dr Copgraw and Dr Rebu
(02:40):
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 impostors 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 really convinced of this. And
(03:01):
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
(03:21):
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
(03:44):
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 craw or
crab grass. But isn't that just all timers. No, not
necessarily Alzheimers. You know, let's it can be forgetfulness. Um,
(04:05):
that can be uh, yeah, I guess this orientation. This
is the you're accusing your husband, your wife, your son,
your daughter of being somebody else, somebody posing it is 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
(04:27):
is uh, proso pregnosia, and this is not proso pregnocia.
That's when you 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 they've done studies with skin conduct conductance
(04:47):
is when 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 you 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
(05:10):
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
(05:31):
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
emognized face right exactly, but they don't have an emotional response.
Here's the thing. They recognize the face enough to know
(05:54):
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
(06:15):
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 thing 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,
(06:35):
that that's that's linked to cap GRAB because they'll recognize
the other person. Yea, the person they're looking at is
that's not my mother, that's not there. There 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
(06:57):
in stimuli, right, like visual stimula. 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.
(07:20):
That is a full memory with cop craw people who
suffer that they're missing the emotional aspect and they have
the recognition and the vs rama Shan drawn I think
I said his name right. He came up in the
Mirror Neurons episode. It's just a brilliant genius dude as
text maybe I think so, um he he said. Probably.
(07:44):
What's happening then is you have a secondary lesion, 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 that wants
(08:05):
to to explain a way 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
(08:29):
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
(08:53):
in here and replaced it an exact replica. Um. And
they're not hallucinating, you know, these they're a air 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
(09:13):
Alzheimer's and schizophrenia as well and other psychotic disorders. Yeah,
and it's it's usually your spouse to um. One article,
are it 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. So let's talk about
some of the explanations that science has come up with,
(09:33):
um since it was first described in it was right
in Freud's wheelhouse. Oh yes, So the psycho analysts had
their had the first crack at it and they swung
and missed. Um. They basically said that it was a
repressed edipits or electric complex, right yeah, and that that
was kind of pooped pretty quickly. Um. They were saying that,
you know that you're just trying to resolve guilt about
(09:54):
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.
(10:18):
Yeah yeah, uh psychodynamic approach. Sorry, Um, that was the
psychodynamic approach, and that that's like we said, it's kind
of been pooh pooed. Well, that was the psychodynamic approach,
was the one where it's repressed feelings. Freudian approach was
that you wanted to have sex with your mom, so
you so you resolved that the guilt from that by saying,
(10:41):
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 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.
(11:03):
They look for lesions, UM, cerebral dysfunction, signs of atrophy,
and like you mentioned, it is also co 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,
(11:25):
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. But that would be a combination
(11:48):
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 Rama Shandron,
Um and his partner. I don't want to just call
out the star, but Hrstein and Rama Shandron did a
(12:09):
paper in nineties seven that was pretty interesting. They consider
it a problem of memory management, 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,
(12:32):
we access the same file and then add to it.
But it's the same file. What Rama Shandron and her
Stein 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
app description. I think there are more onto it with
(12:54):
it's just missing. It's the same file it's just missing
something that the patient senses is missing, the 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
(13:16):
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 Shan Dron. It can be both.
He could his was UM. The only modality is what
they call it. For his UM. His delusion was visual.
(13:38):
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 the DS was a thirty
year old Brazilian guy who got into a car accident
and started suffering cap gross 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,
(14:01):
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 bad
that he came to believe that he himself was an impostor,
and he asked his mother, when the real DS returns,
(14:23):
what 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 to recently, thought there were two
United States, there were doubles for everything, and um. When
(14:43):
he talked to his parents on the phone, though that
he didn't suffer that delusion. It was strict dad, where like,
there's this other guy here pretending to be you. 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 Grafs syndrome, because there
(15:06):
is UM. There have been instances of violence with cap
Cress 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
(15:30):
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. Yeah. Sometimes if it's
(15:51):
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.
(16:12):
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
(16:32):
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
(16:52):
you are to come to believe that they are going
to be replaced by an impostor. This is a sad condition.
So let's talk about some mother Stag conditions too that
are similar. I mean, it's a it's a delusional misidentification syndrome.
It also falls under the umbrella of reduplicative para amnesia
(17:13):
in a while, 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
(17:34):
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. Coutard syndrome. That
(17:59):
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. And it's not I mean, these
are people that really feel this way. It's pretty much
like the psychological manifestation of an existential crisis. Yeah, like
(18:21):
do 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 graft 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
(18:44):
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 Drum
paper which I strongly recommend reading. It's it's only like
(19:06):
nine pages. It's pretty interesting stuff is Every once in
a while he comes he pulls back and he's like,
can you f and believe the brain? Yeah? It is
incredible what what it can do? And when it malfunctions? Man,
can it ever a malfunction? But he's pointing out that, like,
through these really really rare cases, um, you can start
(19:30):
to get a glimpse in 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 pick
and choose and you know, from like alien hand to
(19:53):
cap craw to how memories are formed and how you
taste and the brain. Yeah, it's just pretty amazing stuff.
I know you take it, taste 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 too. It's good documentary. Good documentary.
(20:15):
Go check that one out. Yeah. Uh, And you got
anything else on cap graw No, sir, okay, cap craw
crab grass cap grass, COUDI gras butter all 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
(20:36):
I said, um, search bar, let's have a let's take
a message break and now listener, Yes, buddy, I'm gonna
call this one. Email from a former Mormon, former Mormon
(20:58):
foreman before Norman. Uh. Hey, guys and Jarious listening 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 mirroring multiple spouses, men can still be sealed
to multiple women. And I'll try and explain sealing to you,
(21:19):
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.
(21:40):
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 the multiple women when
my parents went through their divorce. Even though they went
(22:01):
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
(22:23):
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, the church's
practice of polygamy doesn't bother me anymore. Educated consenting adults
(22:44):
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 in marriage. No longer remember the church,
but I still find the religion and culture very fascinating.
A podcast on how the Church of Jesus Christ at
(23:05):
Saturday Scenes works would be amazing. And that is from
Ethan even Clark. Yeah, long lost brother, and we've been
asked by many uh 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
(23:28):
before we hit the fifty year mark. Let's just like
one after any other, the never ending cycle. We will
add it to the cycle, the never ending cycle starting
a tray you Uh. If you want to suggest a
podcast and accompany it with the story or some outsiders
former insider analysis, um, we want to hear it. You
(23:50):
can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast,
Join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know.
You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at
Discovery dot com and wait, wait, wait, don't press stuff yet.
Go to our website. It's www. Dot stuff you Should
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(24:15):
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