“It is only when actions or operations fail that one can speak of contact with the environment”, noted Ernst von Glasersfeld, and it is through the analysis of confabulation, a devastating memory defi cit, that Armin Schnider derives important insights into the workings of memory. The Confabulating Mind: How the Brain Creates Reality is an up-to-date review of the most important aspects of confabulation, ranging from its debated defi nition, aetiology, and anatomical bases, to neuropsychological mechanisms. Broadly, confabulation is the production of false statements after cerebral disease. The fi rst two chapters provide an extraordinarily detailed description of the phenomenology of confabulation in all its variety. Schnider describes his patients and lets neurologists from the early 1900s, who were the fi rst to report on the phenomenon, describe theirs. The result is impressive, with high historical and neuropsychological accuracy. The reader can learn about the fi rst cases and interpretations of confabulation without ever feeling lost in obsolete concepts, which the author translates, when necessary, to the current ones. Confabulation is not a unitary phenomenon, and there is a need for systematisation. Schnider proposes the classifi cation of confl abulation into categories—provoked, momentary, fantastic, and behaviourally spontaneous—to facilitate scientifi c communication. Chapters 3–7 deal with the anatomical basis of confabulation in neurological diseases; the relation between confabulation and related phenomena, such as amnesia, disorientation, and anosognosia; and the description of competing neuropsychological accounts of confabulation. Clinically relevant features, such as assessment and management, are also covered briefl y. A chapter is devoted to disentangling the relation between confabulation and false recognition, which is not specifi c to confabulators, yet patients who confabulate are more susceptible to false recognition than patients who do not, under certain conditions. What those conditions have in common is not yet clear. The reasoning is always clear, concise, and empirically based, with an excellent review of the literature. The last two chapters focus on behaviourally spontaneous confabulation. Patients can act on the basis of confabulatory beliefs, with dramatic consequences. According to the author, confabulation underlies the inability to suppress memory traces that are not relevant to the current reality, which he assimilates to a defi cit in extinction. The results of a series of elegant experiments by Schnider and colleagues with various neuroimaging techniques suggest that the fi ltering of irrelevant memories, and the consequent construction of a representation of reality, are early processes that are supported by the orbitofrontal regions. The theoretical and practical relevance of this book will interest a wide audience, including neurologists, clinicians, students, and researchers.