Assessment of everyday memory functioning in temporal lobe epilepsy and healthy adults using the multifactorial...

Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) is associated with differing degrees of objective and subjective memory impairment. Memory self-report is an important part of the assessment process but few reliable and valid measures have been researched with this group. We thus aimed to explore subjective impairments with a robust measure: the multifactorial memory questionnaire (MMQ; Troyer and Rich, 2002). This was administered to 82 people with TLE and an age and education matched control group of the same size. The questionnaire probes worries about memory (MMQ-contentment); subjective forgetfulness (MMQ-ability); and use of compensatory strategies (MMQ-strategy). The TLE group reported significantly more worries about their memory, more instances of forgetfulness and use of more strategies than control participants. Strategy use was related to demographic factors in controls but not in the TLE group. Analysis of epilepsy related factors indicated that hemispheric laterlisation subgroups did not differ from one another on any subscale, nor did participants grouped according to their use of one, several, or no anti-epileptic medications. Measures of chronicity including age of onset and illness duration also failed to correlate with the MMQ subscales. Because objective memory performance is often impaired in more chronic and intractable cases, the lack of difference in subjective complaint is surprising and warrants future research to examine the relationship between this questionnaire and standardized test scores. We conclude that the MMQ is a clinical measure that could be used either outside or in tandem with neuropsychological assessment to gauge everyday memory difficulties among epilepsy patients.