MUST READ NeuroLogica Blog » Reality Testing and Metacognitive Failure

Novella asks the reader to imagine coming home to your spouse and finding someone who looks and acts exactly like your spouse, but you have the strong feeling that they are an imposter. He the supposes that they don’t “feel” like your spouse. Steve goes on to say “Something is clearly wrong”, and that in this situation most people conclude that their spouse is, in fact, an imposter. In some cases this has even lead to the murder of the “imposter” spouse, he says.

He mentions then the neurological syndrome known as Capgras delusion – a sense of hypofamiliarity, that someone well known to you is unfamiliar. And also mentions the opposite of this – hyperfamiliarity, the sense that a stranger is familiar to you, known as Fregoli delusion. Suffers often feel that they are being stalked by someone known to them but in disguise, he says.

Novella goes on to say that a recent article by psychologist Philip Garrans explores these issues in detail, but with appropriate caution. We are dealing with complex concepts and some fuzzy definitions. But in there are some clear mental phenomena that reveal, at least to an extent, how our minds work…