Confabulation

Confabulation is a memory disorder that may occur in patients who have sustained damage to both the basal forebrain and the frontal lobes. And is defined as the spontaneous production of false memories: either memories for events which never occurred, or memories of actual events which are displaced in space or time. Confabulation: knowledge and recollective experience. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 10(1), 1-20. Confabulation is considered “honest lying,” but is distinct from lying because there is typically no intent to deceive and the individuals are unaware that their information is false. Although patients can present blatantly false information (“fantastic confabulation”), confabulatory information can also be coherent, internally consistent, and relatively normal. Individuals who confabulate are generally very confident about their recollections, despite evidence contradicting its truthfulness. The most known causes of confabulation are traumatic and acquired (e.g., aneurysm, edema) brain damage, and psychiatric or psychological disorders (e.g., schizophrenia, bipolar, Alzheimer`s).

Two distinct types of confabulation are often distinguished: spontaneous and provoked.

Spontaneous, or primary, confabulations do not occur in response to a cue and seem to be involuntary. Spontaneous confabulation is also relatively rare and may result from the interaction between frontal lobe pathology and organic amnesia, and is more common in cases of dementia.

Provoked, momentary, or secondary, confabulation represents a normal response to a faulty memory and is common in both amnesia and dementia. Provoked confabulations can become apparent during memory tests. Another distinction found in confabulations is that between verbal and behavioral. Verbal confabulations are spoken false memories and are more common, while behavioral confabulations occur when an individual acts on their false memories. Confabulated memories of all types most often occur in autobiographical memory, and are indicative of a complicated and intricate process that can be led astray at any point during encoding, storage, or recall of a memory. This type of confabulation is commonly seen in Korsakoff's syndrome.