Confabulation

In medicine, confabulation is the telling of freely invented and objectively false information that can not be placed in any context with reality. These are to be distinguished however from lying, the conscious spreading of wrong information. In the case of confabulation, the person affected actually believes what is being told to be true; this is based, for example, on false perceptions or malfunctions of the memory. Brain damage is also a common cause. Confabulations can also occur under hypnosis, for example to fill gaps in stories. This should be considered, as well as the false memory effect. In fact, in general, the state under hypnosis tends to be attributed with an increased ability to remember.