Confabulation

"Confabulation is a memory disorder that causes people to have inaccurate memories. These inaccuracies may range from distortion of minor details, to complete fabrication of the entire memory. The disorder is known to be caused by brain damage such as from an aneurysm, or dementia from such conditions as Alzheimer's Disease. People who confabulate are not lying, they have no intention to deceive, and they are not even aware that they are giving wrong information.

A confabulation may involve a distortion of temporal context, where the memory is accurate, but misplaced in time. For example, someone may give a very detailed account of what they did on Christmas Day 2010, including who was present at the family gathering, what was served at the dinner table, and the iPhone 5 they received as a gift. Of course, this is impossible, since the phone was only released in 2012.

Another type of confabulation involves inaccuracies in the actual content of the memory. For example, remembering that their father was the one who carved the turkey, when he had already passed away years before. "