ABSTRACT
“Confabulation” was first applied as a technical term by the neurologists Bonhoeffer, Pick, and Wernicke to false memory reports made by their patients, who suffered from an amnesic syndrome that later came to be known as Korsakoff’s amnesia. It is widely accepted that confabulation comes in more and less severe forms. The milder version was initially referred to as “momentary confabulation” by Bonhoeffer in his writings on Korsakoff’s patients. The original definition of “confabulation” contains three criteria: confabulations are false; confabulations are reports; and confabulations are about memories. Those using “confabulation” in the broader sense simply ignore the memory criterion, assuming something else to be the core feature of confabulation. Patients who have undergone a split-brain operation will tend to confabulate about actions performed by the right hemisphere. False attributions of emotions can count as confabulations. Confabulation arises when a malfunctioning perceptual or mnemonic process creates a flawed mental representation that a malfunctioning prefrontal process is unable to correct.
