Impaired Social Behavior in Children With Benign Childhood Epilepsy With Centrotemporal Spikes

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to assess the emotional and cognitive aspects of social cognition among patients with rolandic epilepsy. A computerized neuropsychological battery was used for cognitive evaluation. Affective and cognitive social cognition were evaluated using two computerized Theory of Mind tasks. Cognitive abilities and social behavior of 15 children, diagnosed with rolandic epilepsy, ages 7 to 13 years were assessed and compared with 15 age- and education-matched healthy controls. Compared with controls, the epileptic patients had lower scores on verbal and visual learning rate parameters and on verbal processing and were significantly impaired on "affective Theory of Mind" tasks but not on "cognitive Theory of Mind" conditions. Our findings raise the possibility that rolandic epilepsy may affect neural networks affecting cognition and mediating social cognition essential for social behavior, thus challenging the benign nature of the condition.

Impaired performance on advanced Theory of Mind tasks in children with epilepsy is related to poor communication and increased attention problems

“…Impairments in face processing [15,16], emotion recognition [15], and emotional memory [17] have been observed, with one study reporting that poor recognition of fear predicted increased behavioral problems [15]. Poor affective ToM (inferring internal states from emotional cues) was also recently demonstrated in children with epilepsy with centrotemporal spikes [18], indicating that ToM deficits may be present even in the most benign forms of the disease. These studies have provided evidence of specific impairments in particular epilepsy types, often with all groups showing poorer performance when compared with unaffected controls.…”

Memory, Executive Skills, and Psychosocial Phenotype in Children with Pharmacoresponsive Epilepsy: Reactivity to Intervention

“…Recent research notes relationships between psychosocial symptoms and auditory verbal memory (AVM) in children with pharmacoresponsive epilepsies (5), and between AVM and social symptoms in this group (45). This relationship between psychosocial symptoms and AVM may suggest psychosocial functioning as a potential path that may moderate memory intervention in pharmacoresponsive epilepsies patients.…”

Behavioral and fMRI responses to fearful faces are altered in benign childhood epilepsy with centrotemporal spikes (BCECTS)

“…Accordingly, children with early onset temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) demonstrate altered emotion recognition . Furthermore, children with benign childhood epilepsies with centrotemporal spikes (BCECTS) show altered social behavior . In fact, deficit in social cognition could derive from brain dysfunction in the frontotemporal regions primarily affected in BCECTS, since these regions are also viewed as playing an important role in social cognition and development of social skills .…”