Accelerated long-term forgetting in temporal lobe but not idiopathic generalised epilepsy

Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) has been associated with the phenomenon of accelerated long-term forgetting (ALF), in which memories are retained normally over short delays but are then lost at an accelerated rate over days or weeks. The causes of ALF, and whether it represents a consolidation deficit distinct from the one associated with forgetting over short delays, remain unclear. In addition, methodological issues have made results of some previous studies difficult to interpret. This study used improved methodology to investigate the role of seizure activity in ALF. Forgetting was assessed in participants with TLE (who have involvement of temporal lobe structures) and idiopathic generalised epilepsy (IGE; in which seizures occur in the absence of identified structural pathology in the temporal lobes). Learning of novel stimuli was matched between patients with TLE, patients with IGE and healthy controls matched for age and IQ. Results indicated that the TLE group showed accelerated forgetting between 30-min and three-weeks, but not between 40-s and 30-min. In contrast, rates of forgetting did not differ between patients with IGE and controls. We conclude that (1) ALF can be demonstrated in TLE in the absence of methodological confounds; (2) ALF is unlikely to be related to the experience of epilepsy that does not involve the temporal lobes; (3) neither seizures during the three-week delay nor polytherapy was associated with ALF.