Forms of confabulation: dissociations and associations

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Psychology

Background:

• Confabulation, the creation of false memories, is a complex phenomenon.
• The existence of distinct forms of confabulation with unique underlying mechanisms remains a subject of debate.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate four distinct forms of confabulation and their associated cognitive mechanisms in amnesic patients.
• To examine the relationship between confabulation subtypes and executive functions, explicit memory, and orbitofrontal reality filtering capabilities.

Main Methods:

• Assessed 29 amnesic patients using tests of explicit memory and executive functions.
• Administered two reality filtering tasks: memory selection and reversal learning (extinction capacity).
• Analyzed associations between four confabulation types (simple provoked, momentary, behaviourally spontaneous, fantastic) and cognitive measures.

Main Results:

• Simple provoked confabulations (intrusions) were distinct and not linked to specific cognitive deficits.
• Momentary confabulations correlated with impaired mental flexibility and reality filtering issues.
• Behaviourally spontaneous confabulation strongly associated with failures in reality filtering tasks.
• Fantastic confabulation observed in a patient with widespread cognitive dysfunction and reality filtering deficits.

Conclusions:

• Findings support the existence of dissociable types of confabulation with differing underlying mechanisms.
• Reality filtering deficits appear crucial for behaviourally spontaneous confabulation.
• Momentary confabulations may arise from various cognitive impairments.