Coltheart Max, Davies Martin
School of Psychological Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.
Corpus Christi College, Oxford, UK.
Cogn Neuropsychiatry. 2022 Jan;27(1):69-82. doi: 10.1080/13546805.2021.2011185. Epub 2021 Dec 10.
Capgras delusion is sometimes defined as believing that close relatives have been replaced by strangers. But such replacement beliefs also occur in response to encountering an acquaintance, or the voice of a familiar person, or a pet, or some personal possession. All five scenarios involve believing something familiar has been replaced by something unfamiliar.
We evaluate the proposal that these five kinds of delusional belief should count as subtypes of the same delusion.
Personally familiar stimuli activate the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) much more strongly than unfamiliar stimuli. In Capgras delusion, this difference is absent, prompting the delusional idea that a familiar person is actually a stranger. We suggest this absence of an effect of familiarity on SNS response will occur in all five scenarios and will prompt the idea that the familiar has been replaced by the unfamiliar.
We propose that: (a) all five scenarios be referred to as subtypes of Capgras delusion; (b) in all five, ideas about replacement are prompted by weakness of SNS responses to familiar stimuli; (c) this is insufficient to generate delusion. For a delusional idea to become a belief, a second factor (impaired hypothesis evaluation) must also be present.
卡普格拉妄想有时被定义为相信近亲已被陌生人取代。但这种替代信念也会在遇到熟人、熟悉的人的声音、宠物或某些个人物品时出现。所有这五种情况都涉及相信熟悉的事物已被不熟悉的事物所取代。
我们评估了这五种妄想信念应被视为同一种妄想的亚型的提议。
与不熟悉的刺激相比，个人熟悉的刺激对交感神经系统（SNS）的激活要强得多。在卡普格拉妄想中，这种差异不存在，从而引发了熟悉的人实际上是陌生人的妄想观念。我们认为，在所有这五种情况下都会出现熟悉度对SNS反应缺乏影响的情况，并会引发熟悉的事物已被不熟悉的事物所取代的观念。
我们提议：（a）所有这五种情况都应被称为卡普格拉妄想的亚型；（b）在所有这五种情况中，关于替代的观念是由SNS对熟悉刺激的反应减弱所引发的；（c）这不足以产生妄想。要使妄想观念成为一种信念，还必须存在第二个因素（假设评估受损）。
