Confabulation in a patient with fronto-temporal dementia and a patient with Alzheimer's disease

This paper describes two patients, O.I. and B.Y., with a confabulatory synd rome. O.I. was diagnosed with probable fronto-temporal dementia, whereas B. Y. met the criteria for probable Alzheimer's disease. O.I., but not B.Y., w as impaired on tests of frontal/executive functions, and performed better t han B.Y. on clinical tests of memory. Both patients confabulated in episodi c/autobiographical memory tasks and in personal future planning tasks. B.Y. confabulated also in a semantic memory task. It is argued that the pattern of confabulation and the cognitive profile shown by the two patients is ex plained better by the hypothesis proposed by Dalla Barba and co-workers (Da lla Barba et al., 1997b) than by current theories of confabulation.