When Rey-Osterrieth’s Complex Figure Becomes a Church: Prevalence and Correlates of Graphic Confabulations in Dementia

Abstract

Verbal confabulation (VC) has been described in several pathological conditions characterized by amnesia and has been defined as ‘statements that involve distortion of memories’. Here we describe another kind of confabulation (graphic confabulation, GC), evident at the recall of the Rey-Osterrieth complex figure (ROCF). In a retrospective study of 267 patients with mild-to-moderate dementia, 14 patients (4.9 %) recalled the abstract ROCF as drawings with recognizable semantic meaning. VC was evident at the story recall test in 19.8% of the study participants. VC and GC were homogeneously distributed among the different types of dementia. VC has been proposed to originate from complex interactions of amnesia, motivational deficit and dysfunction of monitoring systems. On the contrary, GC seems to be the result of a deficit in visual memory replaced by the semantic translation of isolated parts of the ROCF along with a source monitoring deficit.

Cortical Thinning in the Medial Temporal Lobe and Precuneus Is Related to Cognitive Deficits in Patients With Subcortical Ischemic Vascular Disease

“…Previous studies suggested that precuneus and PCC play a role in visuospatial imagery and spatial memory. The subjects took the ROCF test ( Pelati et al, 2011 ), which is a commonly used neuropsychological test that evaluates spatial memory ability at the recall stage. We found thinning of the bilateral precuneus in patients with SIVD, especially those with CI, and the thickness of the bilateral precuneus was related to ROCF immediate recall scores.…”

Modified Taylor Complex Figure: Normative data from 290 adults

“…The ROCF has a long history in neuropsychology both in clinical and research settings: it is used to assess a variety of cognitive processes such as visuo‐spatial functions, visual episodic memory, planning, organizational skills, problem‐solving, executive functions, visuo‐motor coordination, and constructional praxis (Meyers & Meyers, ). Accordingly, this test has been administered to patients with traumatic brain injuries (Bigler, ), amnesia (Kixmiller, Verfaellie, Mather, & Cermak, ), dementia (Pelati et al ., ), and epilepsy (Barr et al ., ; Frank & Landeira‐Fernandez, ; Wisniewski, Wendling, Manning, & Steinhoff, ), but it has been used also in psychiatric populations, such as patients with obsessive‐compulsive disorders or schizophrenia (Kim, Namgoong, & Youn, ; Seidman, Lanca, Kremen, Faraone, & Tsuang, ; Shin et al ., ). The ROCF can be administered to both children (Mati‐Zissi & Zafiropoulou, ) and elderly people (Elderkin‐Thompson et al ., ).…”

The Simple Copy Task: Detecting Higher Order Visual Processing Deficits in Schizophrenia, Dementia, and Movement Disorder Groups

“…The one difference between the schizophrenia and dementia groups was that the inclusion of extra items (i.e., confabulation) error type was present in the model for dementia but not schizophrenia. Confabulation in figure reproductions has been proposed to relate to memory and executive compromise common in various forms of dementia (Pelati et al., 2011). Given that the SCT involves direct copy of the target figure (thus reducing demands placed on memory), the mechanism underlying the deficit in this case appears executive in nature.…”