Mechanism of disorientation: Reality filtering versus content monitoring

作者：Bouzerda Wahlen Aurelie; Nahum Louis; Ptak Radek; Schnider Armin^*

来源：Cortex, 2013, 49(10): 2628-2636.

DOI：10.1016/j.cortex.2013.07.014

• Disorientation
• False memory
• Extinction
• Post-traumatic amnesia
• Orbitofrontal cortex
• Strategic retrieval account

Disorientation is frequent after brain damage. It is a constituent component of post-traumatic amnesia and was part of the original definition of the Korsakoff syndrome, together with amnesia and confabulations. Orbitofrontal reality filtering is a pre-conscious memory control process that has been held accountable for disorientation and a specific type of confabulations that patients act upon. A recent study questioned the specificity of this process and suggested that confabulating patients who failed in orbitofrontal reality filtering similarly failed to monitor the precise content of memories, a critical step within the strategic retrieval account, which describes a series of processes leading up to the recollection of memories. In the present study we combined the proposed experimental requirements of both processes in a single continuous recognition task and tested a group of 21 patients with a matched deficit of delayed free recall. We found that only deficient reality filtering, but not content monitoring, significantly correlated with disorientation and distinguished between confabulators and non-confabulators. Thus, reality confusion, as evident in disorientation and behaviourally spontaneous confabulation, primarily reflects an inability to monitor memories' relation with ongoing reality rather than to monitor their precise content.

• 出版日期2013-12