Forgetting to remember in epilepsy

Complaints of impaired cognition are common in persons with epilepsy and especially frequent are memory complaints.¹ However, concordance is often poor between performance on objective memory tests and subjective concerns of patients. Very often, the best predictor of memory complaints is depression.¹ This might lead one to pay less attention to patients' cognitive complaints. However, if one drills down a bit, it becomes apparent that “memory” is a broad catch phrase used by patients to describe a diversity of cognitive difficulties ranging from retrieval failures (e.g., word or name finding) to attention or encoding failures (e.g., poor immediate recall of what one read or heard), and to other specific memory processes or systems.²

In this issue of Neurology®, Wandschneider and colleagues³ examine a type of memory not usually considered when patients with epilepsy express concern regarding “memory problems.” Prospective memory is the ability to fulfill previously planned intentions. A good example is forgetting to pick up the laundry on the way home from work, something …