Since Korsakoff's (1889/1955) first descriptions of confabulation at the end of the 19th century, all attempts to understand this neuropsychological disorder have focused on memory dysfunctions. Although the precise mechanisms underlying confabulation are still a matter of debate, the prevalent view is that confabulation is the output of a faulty recollective process. In the present paper we raise doubts about this undemonstrated assumption, arguing that confabulators are not necessarily attempting to recall when they confabulate. We describe a patient (M.L.) who floridly confabulated after a ruptured aneurism of the anterior communicating artery. The patient was administered a range of verbal tasks that required either memory recollection or other kinds of cognitive processes not involving memory. We conclude that the memory dysfunction exhibited by our patient represents one of many manifestations of a more general underlying disorder characterized by an inability to select the cognitive process that matches the task requirements in conjunction with a compulsion to provide verbal responses.

中文翻译：

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聊天者真的会努力记住他们什么时候聊天吗？案例报告

自从 Korsakoff (1889/1955) 在 19 世纪末首次描述胡言乱语以来，所有理解这种神经心理障碍的尝试都集中在记忆功能障碍上。尽管虚构的确切机制仍存在争议，但普遍的观点是，虚构是错误的回忆过程的输出。在本文中，我们对这种未经证实的假设表示怀疑，认为交谈者在交谈时不一定试图回忆。我们描述了一名患者 (ML)，他在前交通动脉动脉瘤破裂后胡言乱语。患者接受了一系列语言任务，这些任务需要记忆回忆或其他类型的不涉及记忆的认知过程。