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1. Jessica Macari

2. Delusional Misidentification Syndromes
Inability to register the identity of something:
an object, event, place or person.
Due to malfunctioned familiarity processing
during information processing

3. Capgras delusion
Delusional belief that a friend, family member,
etc. has been replaced by a twin impostor
Most common
While they may look and act just like the real
person, some essence of the person is missing,
almost as though "the soul of the person isn't
in there,“
( Being John Malkovich)

4. Capgras delusion
Visual route (visual cortex) and affective route (limbic system) 
face recognition
Maladaptive function of the hypersensitive amygdala:
creates a feeling too strongly suspicious to be rejected

5. Case of Sylvie G.
•Believed that her husband was transformed before her eyes into different people
•Continually felt as though people she knew were replaced by other people
•Sylvie looked at the shoes and feet of those she suspected were fakes, and would
use that as an indicator.
•She also thought her hens were replaced by older ones; she even struggled with
believing her coat was the same one she’d always had.
Courbon and Tusques (French neuropsychiatrists)

6. Prosopagnosia
•Inability to recognize familiar faces
•Cannot match the face to the person it belongs to
•Individuals know the face, but elicits no emotional
response.
•Dysfunction in the fusiform gyrus of the brain, the
part where color and facial recognition is centered

7. Reduplicative Paramnesia
An individual believes a place or location has
been duplicated, existing in two or more places
simultaneously

8. Reduplicative Paramnesia
• RS, a 71 year old man, no previous brain damage or history of schizophrenia
• Insisted his home was not his "real" house, yet recognized his family
• Noticed similarities, but still believed the house was fake
• Remarked on how striking it was that the owners of this house had the same
ornaments as he had in "his" house and on what a coincidence it was that there were
similar items beside the bed as there were in "his" house.
• At interviews, RS continued to insist that there were two "Riverside Avenues“
• A few days later he believed he returned to his ‘real home’

9. Intermetamorphosis
When a patient confuses the identities of familiar people or
feels that they are being mistaken for someone else.
Courbon and Tusques coined the term to describe the illusion
where things/people suddenly change into something or
someone else.

10. Fregoli delusion
• A delusional belief that different people are in fact a single
person (well known to the victim) who changes appearance or
is in disguise
• Interior of the person is different
• Form of persecution
(Courbon and Fail)

11. History
The condition is named after the Italian actor Leopoldo
Fregoli who was renowned for his ability to make quick
changes of appearance during his stage act. Famous for his
impersonations.

12. Fregoli Case
• 35 year old woman, divorced, unemployed
•Diagnosed with chronic paranoid schizophrenia, stopped medication
•Suffered grandiose delusions of actors who she thought were her
friends
•Believed she was the girlfriend of a famous actor Erik Estrada who
was always visiting her home, disguised as other people
•Scored borderline impaired on the Benton Test

13. Mirrored-self misidentification
Belief that one's reflection in a mirror is some
other person who is following them around

14. Patient FE
• 87 year old male, married with 2 children, no history of schizophrenia
• Began having nocturnal hallucinations
• He started not being able to recognize himself in the mirror
• He thought the mirror image was a stranger
• Had knowledge about mirrors and understood what reflections were.
• Later on, he was unable to recognize his wife’s reflection, said:
“I have met the stranger’s wife, seen her.
I don’t think she talks, either”

15. Syndrome of subjective doubles
• Delusion that person has a double or doppelgänger
•Same appearance, but usually with different character
traits and leading a life of its own.
•Sometimes the patient has the idea that there is more
than one double

16. Reverse subjective doubles
•When one believes an impostor is taking over their body
•Misidentification of the self
•In the process of being replaced

17. Bodily Delusions

18. Cotard delusion
a disorder where the individual believes
• They are dead(either figuratively or literally)
• Do not exist
• Are putrefying
• Have lost their blood or internal organs
• Delusions of immortality
• Feelings of unreality

19. Cotard Delusion
• Named after Jules Cotard, a French neurologist who first
described the condition
• Mostly occurs from brain damage to the right cerebral
hemisphere, which deals with the expression of
visual, facial, and verbal emotion as well as body-image.
• Usually accompanied by other delusions

20. RB Case
• 61 year old man with a schizophrenic wife
• Became depressed and overdosed, following surgery
• Believed he had been dead for a week
• Said he wasn’t on earth but was somewhere between heaven and hell
• “Anxious agitation”
• He was deeply distressed, unable to lie or sit for a long time
• Electro-convulsive therapy was used, and his beliefs ceased

21. Somatoparaphrenia
• When an individual denies ownership of a limb, or part of
their body
• Sometimes believes that the limb belongs to someone else
• Related to body integrity identity disorder (BIID)
• May cause the person to desire amputation

22. Breen, Nora, Diana Caine, and Max Coltheart. "Mirrored-self Misidentification: Two Cases
of Focal Onset Dementia." Neurocase 7.3 (2001): 239-54. Print.
Duchaine, Bradley, and Ken Nakayama. "Developmental Prosopagnosia and the Benton
Facial Recognition Test." AAN Enterprises. Print.
Feinberg, T., and D. Roane. "Delusional Misidentification." Psychiatric Clinics of North
America 28.3 (2005): 665-83. Print.
Kapur, N., A. Turner, and C. King. "Reduplicative Paramnesia: Possible Anatomical and
Neuropsychological Mechanisms." Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry 51.4
(1988): 579-81. Print.
Parkin, Alan J. Case Studies in the Neuropsychology of Memory. Hove, England: Psychology,
1997. Print.
Rugg, M. D. Cognitive Neuroscience. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1997. Print.