Capgras delusion makes people see loved ones as imposters due to disrupted emotional brain circuits.

Social media can strip away human warmth, leaving only surface-level, "imposter" versions of people.

TikTok takes this further, built from the start with no connection to your real social world.

On an ordinary summer morning in 1994, David woke up with a stranger in the house.

When he went into the kitchen for breakfast, there she was, making coffee. She looks up at him calmly as he enters the room, as if nothing is out of the ordinary. "Hello, David," the portly woman in a sunflower dress says calmly. "How does she know my name?" David thinks.

When he studies her face, he's struck by an uncanny observation: she looks exactly like his Mom. She looks like her, talks like her, and acts like her. He doesn't know who this woman is, but one thing is certain—she's not his Mom. She's a realistic look-alike who's impersonating his mother; she's an imposter.

The woman here is, in fact, David's mother. David, or patient D.S., as he was known, suffers from a rare disorder called Capgras delusion. It's a neurological condition typified by a deeply held conviction: the people close to them are not who they say they are. She looks like your mother, but something's missing; she's an imposter pretending to be your mother.

What accounts for this seemingly strange belief? When we examine the underlying neuroscience, we see that these beliefs aren't so irrational; they're the only rational........

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