The false memory syndrome: Experimental studies and comparison to confabulations

Abstract

False memories, or recollections that are factually incorrect but strongly believed, remain a source of confusion for both psychiatrists and neurologists. We propose model for false memories based on recent experimental investigations, particularly when analyzed in comparison to confabulations, which are the equivalent of false memories from neurological disease. Studies using the Deese/Roedinger–McDermott experimental paradigm indicate that false memories are associated with the need for complete and integrated memories, self-relevancy, imagination and wish fulfillment, familiarity, emotional facilitation, suggestibility, and sexual content. In comparison, confabulations are associated with the same factors except for emotional facilitation, suggestibility, and sexual content. Both false memories and confabulations have an abnormal sense of certainty for their recollections, and neuroanatomical findings implicate decreased activity in the ventromedial frontal lobe in this certainty. In summary, recent studies of false memories in comparison to confabulations support a model of false memories as internally-generated but suggestible and emotionally-facilitated fantasies or impulses, rather than repressed memories of real events. Furthermore, like confabulations, in order for false memories to occur there must be an attenuation of the normal, nonconscious, right frontal “doubt tag” regarding their certainty.

False Reports from Patients with Frontotemporal Dementia: Delusions or Confabulations?

“…This suggests attenuation of the normal "doubt tag" or intuitive, immediate "feeling of rightness," an automatic, unconscious checking system for memories or thoughts [51]. Without these normal feelings of doubt, individuals may not go on to perform a conscious, slow, and effortful checking for the veracity of memories or thoughts [15,20,25,37,51]. In addition to disturbed source monitoring [15,16], the VMPFC also appears responsible for the normal "doubt tag" or decrease in feeling of rightness [1,16,40,51].…”

Neuroimaging correlates of false memory in 'Alzheimer's disease: A preliminary systematic review

“…It is also true that by using a broad definition of false memory (to include false recognition, intrusion and confabulation) we have introduced further heterogeneity. However, it is generally acknowledged that these phenomena share similar underlying mechanisms (Mendez and Fras, 2011;Van Damme and d'Ydewalle, 2010).…”

The epistemic innocence of clinical memory distortions

“…When we talk about CMDs, we refer to those reports of past autobiographical events by people who (a) have a clinically relevant memory impairment; (b) misrepresent reality in some important respect; (c) have no awareness of the misrepresentation (Talland, ); and (d) have no intention to deceive (Moscovitch, ). We are especially interested in the status of memory reports that contain some true information about the past and are not completely fabricated or implanted (Gallo, ; Loftus, ; Mendez & Fras, ). We take CMDs to include both distorted memories and instances of confabulation (Van Damme & d'Ydewalle, , p. 212) that are elicited by questioning and whose content can be plausible and may or may not be bizarre (Kopelman, , pp.…”

“…CMDs can offer an illusion of competence. That is because CMDs are associated with an increased need for completion and integration (Mendez & Fras, ). People with some neuropsychological disorders tend to make inaccurate reports about their past because they have a gap in memory that they feel a strong inclination to fill.…”