Confabulation and delusional misidentification a four year follow-up study

We describe a patient, AZ, who showed, in addition to an amnesic syndrome w hich eventually improved, longstanding confabulation and delusional misiden tification following bilateral frontal and right temporal post-traumatic le sions. Confabulation appeared in personal recollections and on long-term ve rbal memory testing. Misidentification concerned mainly his wife and house. During the four year follow-up AZ's confabulation progressively shrinked s o as to become restricted to verbal memory tasks. By contrast, misidentific ation persisted. General semantic memory was unimpaired throughout, while p erformance on frontal tests was initially poor and partly improved in time. We argue that confabulation and misidentification, though often intermingl ed and occurring after similar lesion pattern, should be considered as diff erent neuropsychological entities.