The woman wanting to feed her little boy, for instance, did have children, but they were all adults. Scrambling Realityįrequently confabulations contain shreds of truth, with some details perhaps drawn from a snippet of conversation, a photograph, or a television show. Another time he told a physician he was worried that he might not get leave from his military duties the next day. One time he went to a physician's office in the ward and asked if he could use the telephone to arrange a deer hunt for that afternoon with his friends. The man occasionally acted on his confabulations. After regaining consciousness and being transferred to a rehabilitation ward, the charming and chatty man told stories, some true, others imaginary, according to his relatives. In another case referenced in the same article, a 45-year-old man sustained a head injury in a motorcycle accident. Schnider had bleeding in her brain from a ruptured aneurysm. Because there is no intent to deceive and nothing to be gained, confabulation is sometimes referred to as “honest lying” by researchers.Ĭonfabulation usually happens after a brain injury, whether from trauma, a stroke, or a tumor. “In contrast to lying, confabulation is not intentional and, in many cases, not even consciously perceived by the confabulator,” says Dr. Patients tell stories about their recent doings and plans for the future that are blatantly incompatible with reality,” says Armin Schnider, MD, professor of neurorehabilitation at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, who wrote about the woman in various medical journals and is considered a leading authority on the disorder. “Confabulation is an intriguing disorder of memory and thought. As the scientists noted, this story was a case of confabulation, an unusual neurologic phenomenon in which people talk, often with great flourishes, about events or experiences in their lives-unaware that their stories are false. The house was a hospital, and her hungry little boy was a grown man. Nothing the 58-year-old woman said was true.

The woman's account, while seemingly ordinary, was extraordinary to the researchers who wrote about it in the journal Brain in 1996. She was off to look after her little boy, who needed to be fed.

She explained that in the morning she had awakened, packed her suitcase, and said goodbye.

In detailed and vivid language, a middle-aged woman talked about her plans for the day and how she had arranged the rooms in the house where she was staying. Learn About Confabulation, Also Known as “Honest Lying' Damage to the brain can sometimes cause confabulation, an unusual neurologic phenomenon in which people talk, often with great flourishes, about events or experiences in their lives-unaware that their stories are false.

Childhood trauma and compulsive lying