Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0002622 (amnesia)
 5,520 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Confabulation has been defined as the falsification of memory occurring in clear consciousness in association with an organically-derived amnesia. It was first described by Korsakoff in 1889 in alcoholic amnesic patients. Later studies showed that confabulation is also seen in a variety of other pathologies, such as anterior communicating artery rupture, traumatic brain injury, Alzheimer's disease, and brain tumors. Two forms of confabulation have been described: Momentary (provoked) confabulation which is produced in response to questions, for compensating the gaps in memory; and fantastic (spontaneous) confabulation consisting of grandiose and wish-fulfilling characteristics. There is no specific localization for provoked confabulations. However spontaneous confabulations appear as a result of basal forebrain and posterior orbitofrontal cortex lesions. There are numerous hypotheses for explaining the specific nature of confabulations with reference to impairment of general executive dysfunction, temporality, and memory-control processes. Commonly, these interpretations explain memory distortion in terms of frontal network dysfunction. There is a general consensus that confabulation is primarily the result of a deficit of memory retrieval, rather than one of encoding, consolidation, or storage. The normal process of memory recall consists of the evaluation of the cues for retrieval, matching the cues with episodic memory, and reality monitoring. One possible explanation for confabulation is that these patients have lost the checking procedure in memory retrieval, i.e. reality monitoring. This article aimed to describe confabulation and to review its clinical, neuroanatomical, and neuropsychological correlates in an effort to raise clinicians' awareness of the phenomenon and the problematic areas that need to be clarified.
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PMID:[Confabulation: a symptom which is intriguing but not adequately known]. 1756 83

Incorrect beliefs about the properties of memory have broad implications: the media conflate normal forgetting and inadvertent memory distortion with intentional deceit, juries issue verdicts based on flawed intuitions about the accuracy and confidence of testimony, and students misunderstand the role of memory in learning. We conducted a large representative telephone survey of the U.S. population to assess common beliefs about the properties of memory. Substantial numbers of respondents agreed with propositions that conflict with expert consensus: Amnesia results in the inability to remember one's own identity (83% of respondents agreed), unexpected objects generally grab attention (78%), memory works like a video camera (63%), memory can be enhanced through hypnosis (55%), memory is permanent (48%), and the testimony of a single confident eyewitness should be enough to convict a criminal defendant (37%). This discrepancy between popular belief and scientific consensus has implications from the classroom to the courtroom.
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PMID:What people believe about how memory works: a representative survey of the U.S. population. 2182 4