Like, I get that people with CS think loved ones and friends are impostors. So they recognize, but… don’t at the same time? Is it more psychological or neurological?
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This is actually a fascinating neurological issue. The part of your brain that actually recognizes people, faces in particular, doesn’t work correctly. There’s a part of your brain that is hardwired to recognize faces. When this part of your brain isn’t working properly, then when you see someone that you’ve known for a while, you see them, you can look at all the attributes that they possess and realize that they “match” your recollection of how they were supposed to look, but they just don’t “feel right” because the facial recognition part of your brain isn’t kicking in. So it feels like something is wrong and they’re like an imposter. You still have perfect vision, but the part of your brain that does pre processing on the visual signal from your eyes that comprehends what it sees before sending it to the rest of the brain, it’s just not working right.
If you’re honestly interested in this issue along with several other fascinating and weird psychological and neurological issues, I recommend reading The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat by Oliver Sacks.
This contains several dozen neurological issues encountered by a neurologist over his time working in the field, and it mentions this exact syndrome. The person would be in the room and they would think that they are an imposter but they would walk into the other room and call the same person on a phone and they would recognize them because the auditory recognition part of their brain is working properly.
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