Reduplicative paramnesia

Reduplicated paramnesia is one of several "mistaken identity syndromes". A patient with this syndrome is convinced that a familiar person is someone else.

In addition to this disorder, studies include Capgras syndrome. It consists in the belief that people have been replaced by impostors or doppelgangers.

This syndrome was first identified in 1903, when Czechoslovak neurologist Arnold Pik treated a patient who was suspected of Alzheimer's disease in his clinic. The patient claimed that he had been transferred from the original Peak clinic to the same one in another part of the city.

This disorder is usually associated with traumatic brain injury in which the right hemisphere of the brain and both frontal lobes are damaged. Received from this injury, the patient suffers a loss of orientation due to deterioration of visual-spatial perception and loss of visual memory. This is accompanied by the appearance of false memories, which appear when both frontal lobes of the brain are damaged. This brain damage can be associated with strokes, brain tumors, encephalopathies, dementia, and also occurs in various mental disorders such as schizophrenia.