Abstract Details

Title Neural Correlates of Confabulation

Topic Behavioral Neurology

Presentation(s) P07 - (-)

Poster/Presentation
Number 155

Objective

Background BACKGROUND: Confabulation is the production of statements and actions, unintentionally incongruous to the subject's history, present and future situation (Dalla Barba, 1993a). It is mostly common among patients affected by Korsakoff syndrome and those with rupture of aneurysms of the anterior communicant artery.

Design/Methods DESIGN/METHODS: We used a modified version of the confabulation battery (Dalla Barba & Decaix, 2009) to quantify confabulations in seven confabulating amnesics (CA) compared to six non confabulating amnesics (NCA) and matched healthy controls. For each patient a CT scan or a MRI was obtained in order to describe the brain lesion and to identify a common anatomical region underlying the cognitive profile (CA vs. NCA).

Results RESULTS: Overall CA produced 203 confabulations whereas NCA only nine. CA confabulated significantly more in the episodic categories for past and future events as compared to semantic memory categories. Grey matter lesion analysis showed a greater involvement of the ventral and parasagittal prefrontal cortex, right-lateralized in six CA and left-lateralized just in one CA patient. By using a white matter atlas, we estimated that all CA patients' lesions involved the frontal branches of the uncinate fasciculus, connecting anterior and medial temporal lobe portions with ventro-medial prefrontal cortices. NCA presented isolated lesions in the medial temporal lobe (MTL), without lateralization and no common white matter site.

Conclusions CONCLUSIONS: The NCA patients' lesions indicate that an isolated damage of the MTL causes amnesia but no confabulation. The CA patients' performances were associated with lesions in the ventral and parasagittal prefrontal cortices with greater right lateralization, involving also the uncinate white matter bundle. Within this framework, the confabulation might be caused not only by prefrontal lesions, but also by a functional disconnection between the prefrontal cortex and the MTL, through the uncinate fasciculus.

Authors/Disclosures
PRESENTER	No disclosure on file
Raffaella Migliaccio (Hopital de la Pitie-Salpetriere)	Raffaella Migliaccio has nothing to disclose.
	No disclosure on file
Marta Brazzarola	No disclosure on file
Salvatore Lo Fermo	No disclosure on file
Ilaria Zannoni	No disclosure on file
Gianfranco Dalla Barba, MD, PhD (Hopital De La Salpetriere)	No disclosure on file

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