Las Confabulaciones: más allá de un déficit mnésico

Abstract

The confabulations or "honest lies" as defined by Marcovich, are complex phenomena whose study and conceptualization has been changed in the last century. Initially it was thought confabulation as an eminently amnestic phenomenon with major alterations on the information retrie- val; nevertheless, from the research in different clinical and pathological studies, today it is known that the confabulation involved an extensive network of cognitive processes such as executive functioning, emotions, motivation and temporality in addition to the memory subsystems widely described in the literature. The present work constitutes a review of the principal types and confabulation’s explanatory models, inclu- ding also advances in the neuropathology of them. Likewise, there is a brief description of the confabulations in some of the main nosological tables such as Korsakoff's syndrome, Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia, highlighting the shared and distinctive features between them. It also describes the relevancy of emotions in the nature and content of the confabulations as a possible additional form for its characterization, conceptualization and understanding. Finally, it emphasizes the participation of neuropsychologist during clinical assessment as a fundamental part in the routine examination and clinical research