Dr Martha Turner and colleagues from the University College London have conducted a study, with the aim of discovering the causes of confabulation.

Confabulation is a consequence of neurological damage, which manifests itself by patients experiencing false memories. Still, the causes are unknown.

The authors studied a group of 50 patients who has suffered damage to different parts of the brain. The study pointed out that all the patients who confabulated showed damage to the inferior medial prefrontal cortex, a region in the centre of the front part of the brain, right behind the eyes. This has lead scientists to believe that this region might be responsible for confabulation, since other factors like levels of memory ability, and varying levels of “executive functioning” are unlikely to lead to this.

The study was publhised in the May 2008 issue of Cortex, and has implications in our understanding of how the human brain controls memory.