From Peter Ceresole
by e-mail
I was fascinated by the account of Vilayanur Ramachandran and William
Hirstein’s work on people with Capgras syndrome (New Scientist,
Science, 22 March, p 19). My mother, in the last two years of her life, suffered
from something almost identical except that the linkage she lost was to places,
not family.
She suffered from a major stroke (left side) ten years before her death, then
recovered quite well until about seven years later she started to have a series
of small ischaemic strokes. The effects were bizarre. She was staying with my
brother at the time, and would become convinced that we had removed her and her
belongings to some other place.
She was totally familiar with his house and his garden, and was surrounded by
her own furniture. She would tell me that she had been moved, but that we had
been so clever to take all her things with her.
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She would recognise the place, saying: “Isn’t the garden nice? It’s just like
John’s.” I would have to explain that it was John’s, but she wouldn’t have that.
Although she knew everything in her surroundings, it was somewhere
unfamiliar.
The effect lasted for several months and it would distress her, at least in
part, because she felt that we were lying to her when we said that she hadn’t
moved. At the same time she never had any problems identifying members of the
family, either in person or in photographs. I don’t know if the effect
disappeared or if she accommodated to it; after six months or so she ceased to
complain about being in unfamiliar places.
I deduced (not being a neuroscientist) that there was some specific region of
her brain that dealt with familiarity of objects, but not of people. It was
quite independent of the linkage to remembered features and objects. I now
understand that it must have been the linkage to emotion that was affected, but
only in that narrow field.
