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Spontaneous confabulation, temporal context confusion and reality monitoring: A study of three patients with anterior communicating artery aneurysms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 October 2010

MARTHA S. TURNER ,
LISA CIPOLOTTI  and
TIM SHALLICE
MARTHA S. TURNER*
Affiliation:
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London, United Kingdom
LISA CIPOLOTTI
Affiliation:
National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery and Institute of Neurology, London, United Kingdom
TIM SHALLICE
Affiliation:
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London, United Kingdom Cognitive Neuroscience Sector, Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati, Trieste, Italy
*
*Correspondence and reprint requests to: Martha Turner, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3AR, United Kingdom. E-mail: martha.turner@ucl.ac.uk
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Abstract

Spontaneous confabulation involves the production of false or distorted memories, and is commonly associated with ventromedial prefrontal damage. One influential theory proposes that the critical deficit is a failure to suppress currently irrelevant memory traces that intrude into ongoing thinking (Schnider & Ptak, 1999). In this study, we report experimental investigations with three spontaneously confabulating patients aimed at exploring this account. Using Schnider and Ptak’s (1999) continuous recognition paradigm, we replicated their experimental results with our patients. However, our data suggest that the critical impairment might be more generalized than a failure to suppress currently irrelevant memories. First, a temporal source monitoring task failed to show that previous memory traces intrude into the present. Second, a reality monitoring task revealed that confabulating patients had a tendency to misidentify imagined events as real, a result that cannot be explained in terms of temporal confusion. This error was specific to confabulating patients and was not shared by non-confabulating ACoA patients. Our data therefore suggest a more generalized impairment in source monitoring, not only on the basis of temporality or current relevance, but across a range of contextual domains, including information used to distinguish real memories from imaginings. (JINS, 2010, 16, 984–994.)

Keywords

MemoryMemory disordersSource monitoringStrategic retrievalExecutive functionFrontal lobe
Type
Symposia
Information
Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society , Volume 16 , Issue 6 , November 2010 , pp. 984 - 994
Copyright
Copyright © The International Neuropsychological Society 2010

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