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Brain Mechanisms of Reality Monitoring

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Simons, JS 
Garrison, JR 
Johnson, MK 

Abstract

Reality monitoring processes are necessary for discriminating between internally generated information and information that originated in the outside world. They help us to identify our thoughts, feelings, and imaginations, and to distinguish them from events we may have experienced or have been told about by someone else. Reality monitoring errors range from confusions between real and imagined experiences, that are byproducts of normal cognition, to symptoms of mental illness such as hallucinations. Recent advances support an emerging neurocognitive characterization of reality monitoring that provides insights into its underlying operating principles and neural mechanisms, the differing ways in which impairment may occur in health and disease, and the potential for rehabilitation strategies to be devised that might help those who experience clinically significant reality monitoring disruption.

Description

Keywords

frontal lobe, hallucinations, prefrontal cortex, recollection, schizophrenia, source memory

Journal Title

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

1364-6613
1879-307X

Volume Title

21

Publisher

Elsevier
Sponsorship
Medical Research Council (G1000183)
Preparation of this article was supported by a James S. McDonnell Foundation Scholar Award to J.S.S., and by the University of Cambridge Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute, funded by a joint award from the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust.