"The most comprehensive treatment of the subject of confabulation ever written, Hirstein's Brain Fiction represents a pathbreaking and bold synthesis of philosophy and neuroscience. I expect it will prove to be a major resource for scholars and students of this fascinating and important subject for years to come."
-- Todd E. Feinberg, M.D., Professor of Clinical Psychiatry and Neurology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, author of Altered Egos: How the Brain Creates the Self

Some neurological patients exhibit a striking tendency to confabulate-to construct false answers to a question while genuinely believing that they are telling the truth. A stroke victim, for example, will describe in detail a conference he attended over the weekend when in fact he has not left the hospital. Normal people, too, sometimes have a tendency to confabulate; rather than admitting "I don't know," some people will make up an answer or an explanation and express it with complete conviction. In Brain Fiction, William Hirstein examines confabulation and argues that its causes are not merely technical issues in neurology or cognitive science but deeply revealing about the structure of the human intellect.