Prosopagnosia and the Capgras syndrome

The Capgras syndrome is an unusual psychiatric disorder which has attracted much attention in recent years because of its striking nature and controversial etiology and pathogenesis. The question of whether some cases of Capgras syndrome are an expression of a perceptual disorder of facial recognition, i.e., prosopagnosia, is addressed in this report. Careful testing for a possible prosopagnosia revealed that in 2 newly identified cases of Capgras syndrome, the deficit was present. A deficit of facial recognition could not be appreciably detected in a group of normal female and schizophrenic controls.