Get Adobe Acrobat ReaderResearch Areas - Accelerated Long-Term Forgetting (ALF)
Accelerated Long-term Forgetting is the excessively rapid decay of memories that appear to have been acquired successfully, noted by the patient days to weeks after initial encoding.
The occurrence of accelerated forgetting for verbal and non-verbal information among people with epilepsy has now been documented in several single case and small group studies. Recent data from the TIME study add to this body of evidence (Butler et al, 2007; Muhlert et al, 2010). This phenomenon has been interpreted in terms of dual or multi-stage theories of consolidation, with disruption of a process of 'slow' consolidation by clinical or subclinical seizures. However, the precise time course and mechanism of accelerated forgetting, the relative contributions made by disorders of encoding, consolidation and retrieval, and the details of its relationship to seizures, sleep and underlying structural brain pathology remain unclear. We have recently reviewed existing knowledge of ALF (Butler and Zeman, 2008; Butler et al, 2010).