/kənˌfæbjuˈleɪʃən/

A fabricated memory believed to be true.

Confabulation is the formation of false memories, perceptions, or beliefs about the self or the environment as a result of neurological or psychological dysfunction. When it is a matter of memory, confabulation is the confusion of imagination with memory, or the confused application of true memories. It is a plausible but imagined memory that fills in gaps in what is remembered, or ‘the emergence of memories of events and experiences that never took place’ which can occur also among healthy people. Confabulations are difficult to differentiate from delusions and from lying.

Confabulations might have have organic causes, such as brain damage, amnesia, dementia or the use of certain drugs. Patiens with Korsakoff’s syndrome tipically confabulate by guessing an answer or imagining an event and then mistaking their guess or imagination for an actual memory.

A number of studies point as well psychological causes, e.g. the constructivist view of memory maintains that reasoning influences memory, in contrast to the idea that memory supports reasoning.

There are two main types of confabulations:

1) “momentary” (or “provoked”) confabulations, fleeting, and invariably provoked by questions probing the subject’s memory, sometimes consisting of “real” memories displaced in their temporal context.
2) “fantastic” (or “spontaneous”) confabulations, characterised by the spontaneous irrelevant associations, sometimes bizarre ideas, which may be held with firm conviction.

Confabulation was not introduced to the medical literature until around 1900 and has intrigued psychiatrists and neurologists for more than a century as a potential key to unlocking the mysteries of human memory and imagination.

In Spellbound, directed by Aldred Hitchcock in 1945, featuring Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck, a female psychoanalyst protects the identity of an amnesia patient accused of murder while attempting to recover his memory. The set for the dream scene was designed by Salvador Dalí.