Memory assessment in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy to predict memory impairment after surgery: a systematic review

Wada test results contribute to the prediction of change in verbal learning and verbal memory function after temporal lobe epilepsy surgery

“…Most importantly, in contrast to studies 24 – 26 , 28 – 30 describing WT results to be of no added value for the prediction of postsurgical cognitive impairment, our findings indicate the opposite: The incorporation of WT results significantly improved the prediction models of postsurgical change in verbal learning and verbal memory function in our sample. While these results initially seem contradictory and inconsistent, a more thorough examination of previous studies reveals possible explanations.…”

“…In accord with previous research 24 – 26 , we would not recommend the routine performance of WT as part of the presurgical work-up for all patients considered as candidates for epilepsy surgery, or to base the decision for or against epilepsy surgery exclusively on WT results. However, as personalized medicine gains increasing importance in clinical routine 58 , the WT might be an instrument to be used in a highly selected subgroup of patients with clear clinical indications.…”

Concordance of verbal memory and language fMRI lateralization in people with epilepsy

“…10,13,15 Although one would expect these skills to be mapped separately, a large number of studies base the inference of verbal memory lateralization on decision-making language tasks and language-related anatomical activations. [24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31] Despite the fact that this approach may appear attractive, in the sense that it could provide both language and verbal memory lateralization through Note: Pearson's correlation is used to assess the degree of association between memory and language functional MRI laterality indices at a significance threshold of p < .05. Significant values are marked by asterisk (*).…”

“…[19][20][21][22][23] In this context, functional MRI (fMRI) has been introduced as a noninvasive and safe presurgical evaluation tool to support the assessment of the potential postoperative risk for verbal memory deficits. [24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31] However, there is significant diversity among memory fMRI evaluation procedures at the level of task design, as well as at the level of anatomical fMRI signal activation. 32,33 Although there are clinical fMRI studies where tasks are specifically designed to engage verbal memory skills and activate memory-related anatomical regions for the assessment of verbal memory lateralization in presurgical patients with epilepsy, 26,[34][35][36][37][38] the dominant trend is to infer the verbal memory lateralization through language lateralization in tasks that involve a combination of word encoding (WE) and semantic decision-making.…”

“…In this context, functional MRI (fMRI) has been introduced as a noninvasive and safe presurgical evaluation tool to support the assessment of the potential postoperative risk for verbal memory deficits 24–31 . However, there is significant diversity among memory fMRI evaluation procedures at the level of task design, as well as at the level of anatomical fMRI signal activation 32,33 .…”