Measuring forgetting: a critical review of accelerated long-term forgetting studies.

Accelerated long-term forgetting (ALF) refers to abnormal forgetting over hours to weeks despite normal acquisition or initial consolidation. Since standardised assessments of memory typically only test at delays of up to 40-minutes, ALF may go undetected in clinical practice. The memory difficulties associated with ALF can however cause considerable distress to patients.

Can temporal lobe epilepsy surgery ameliorate accelerated long-term forgetting?

Accelerated long-term forgetting (ALF) is a relatively newly identified phenomenon in neuropsychology which has been associated with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). ALF is characterised by intact acquisition and retention of memories over delays of minutes and hours, but abnormally fast forgetting over delays of 24h or more. The causes of ALF are unknown; however disruption of "slow" consolidation processes through seizure activity in the temporal lobes is proposed as a possible explanation.