The hippocampus, a time machine that makes errors

Patients who confabulate have at least partially preserved hippocampus and make confabulatory errors in remembering their past, in orienting themselves in time and space, and in predicting their personal future. Conversely, complete bilateral hippocampal damage produces deep amnesia, temporo-spatial disorientation, and inability to predict the personal future. We propose that the hippocampus is the neural correlate of ‘temporal consciousness’, which is lost in amnesia and present, but malfunctioning in confabulation.