Temporal Lobe Epilepsy and the Selective Reminding Test: The Conventional 30-Minute Delay Suffices.

Abstract

Conventional memory assessment may fail to identify memory dysfunction characterized by intact recall for a relatively brief period but rapid forgetting thereafter. This study assessed learning and retention after 30-min and 24-hr delays on auditory and visual selective reminding tests (SRTs) in right (n = 20) and left (n = 22) temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) patients and controls (n = 49). The left TLE group performed significantly worse than controls on all 3 trials of both tests. The right TLE group differed from the controls on all 3 visual SRT trials and on learning for the auditory SRT. There were no between-groups differences in rate of information lost at the 30-min versus the 24-hr delay. At the individual level, there was no difference in the percentage of patients versus controls who demonstrated isolated memory impairment at the 24-hr delay. Accelerated forgetting over 24 hr is uncommon in TLE patients.Learning and memory impairment are common in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE; Chelune, Naugle, Luders, & Awad, 1991;Wilde et al., 2001). Traditionally, this impairment has been identified through an assessment of immediate memory or learning and then delayed memory or retention for the same information following a 20-to 30-min interval. Although a reliable association between visual memory test performance and the right hippocampus has not been found, conventional auditory learning and retention scores in groups of TLE patients have correlated with left hippocampal volume or transverse (T2) relaxation time on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI; Kalviainen et al., 1997;Kilpatrick et al., 1997;Lencz et al., 1992;Loring et al., 1993;Trenerry, Jack, Cascino, Sharbrough, & Ivnik, 1995;Wood, Saling, O'Shea, Berkovic, & Jackson, 2000); metabolic function, as measured by proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (Kikuchi, Kubota, Hattori, Oya, & Mikuni, 2001;Martin et al., 1999;Sawrie et al., 2000Sawrie et al., , 2001; and hippocampal pathology ratings performed after anterior temporal lobectomy (Baxendale et al., 1998;Rausch & Babb, 1993;Sass et al., 1990).A normal retention or savings score after the standard 30-min delay has been considered to reflect an intact initial consolidation process, with the information retained considered part of long-term episodic memory. However, there is evidence that retention of information over this relatively short delay is not always a good predictor of the permanence of that information in memory, and this evidence suggests that consolidation of information into long-term storage (De Renzi & Lucchelli, 1993;Kapur et al., 1997). For example, three recent case studies of TLE patients revealed a syndrome of amnesia in which retention was normal when assessed after relatively brief delays but impaired as a result of accelerated forgetting when assessed after days or weeks (Holdstock, Mayes, Isaac, Gong, & Roberts, 2002;Kapur et al., 1997;O'Connor, Sieggreen, Ahern, Schomer, & Mesulam, 1997). Accelerated forgetting over time had a clear association with seizure activ...

WMS-III Logical Memory Performance after a Two-Week Delay in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy and Control Groups

“…Our results are consistent with a previous study of auditory and visual selective reminding test (SRT) performance in controls and individuals with TLE (Bell et al, 2005), in which 56% of both the controls and TLE patients in the present study were included. In the SRT study, which utilized immediate, 30-minute delay, and 24-hour delay trials, a left TLE group (n = 22) performed significantly worse than controls (n = 49) on all three trials of both SRT measures.…”

“…A recent study of auditory and visual selective reminding test performance, with a maximum of six learning trials, revealed that TLE patients, especially a group with left TLE, generally demonstrated poorer memory ability than controls but did not differ from the controls in rate of information loss across 30-minute and 24-hour delays (Bell, Fine, Dow, Seidenberg, & Hermann, 2005). In addition, there was no evidence that forgetting over the extended delay was more common in TLE patients compared to controls at the individual level.…”

Forgetting in temporal lobe epilepsy: When does it become accelerated?

“…Moreover, some studies did not report learning performance (Dewar, Hoefeijzers, Zeman, Butler, & Della Sala, 2015;Gallassi et al, 2011;Hoefeijzers, Dewar, Dalla Sala, Butler, & Zeman, 2014;Jansari, Davis, McGibbon, Firminger, & Kapur, 2010;Lah, Mohamed, Thayer, Miller, & Diamond, 2014;McGibbon & Jansari, 2013;Narayanan et al, 2012;O'Connor, Sieggreen, Ahern, Schomer, & Mesulam, 1997;Ricci, Mohamed, Savage, Boserio, & Miller, 2015;Tramoni et al, 2011). In others, learning performance was not equated (Bell, 2006;Bell, Fine, Dow, Seidenberg, & Hermann, 2005;Cronel-Ohayon et al, 2006;Giovagnoli, Casazza, & Avanzini, 1995;Holdstock, Mayes, Isaac, Gong, & Roberts, 2002;Lucchelli & Spinnler, 1998;Mameniskiene et al, 2006;Mayes et al, 2003). These omissions or oversights limit the implications of these studies, as the role of subtle acquisition deficits cannot be excluded.…”

O Procedimento Selective Reminding na Avaliação da Memória e Aprendizagem: Um Levantamento de Estudos Brasileiros

“…Destaca-se a utilização do procedimento com diversos objetivos de avaliação: em mudanças cognitivas no teste de novas drogas (Culang-Reinlieb, Sneed, Keilp, & Roose, 2012;Krupp et al, 2011), disfunções de memória em pacientes com doenças neurológicas (Bell, Fine, Seidenberg, & Hermann, 2005;Solanto et al, 2007), na avaliação de práticas preventivas através de estímulos cognitivos, com o intuito de atrasar os declínios cognitivos em estágios pré-clínicos de demência (Pillai et al, 2011). Também tem sido utilizado para avaliar a diferenças no funcionamento neurocognitivo em patologias ou subtipos (Almeida et al, 2007) e no auxílio ao diagnóstico de doenças neurodegenerativas (Deloire et al, 2006;Wenger, Negash, Petersen, & Petersen, 2010).…”