Neuropsychological Functions in Idiopathic Occipital Lobe Epilepsy

Abstract

Summary: Purpose: Despite the benign prognoses of idiopathic partial epilepsies, particularly regarding the response of seizures to treatment, some evidence now exists that patients with such disorders may have subtle neuropsychological deficits. This study was designed to investigate several modalities of neuropsychological functioning in a group of 21 patients, ranging from 6 to 14 years of age, with idiopathic occipital lobe epilepsy (IOLE). The case patients were compared with 21 healthy controls matched for age, sex, and socioeconomic status. Methods: A battery of age‐appropriate neuropsychological tests was administered individually to all the participants. Tests were chosen on the basis of age‐appropriate norms, their ability to represent a wide variety of functional domains, and their appropriateness in a cross‐cultural setting. The tests were selected to measure functioning in six domains: intellectual functioning, attention, memory, academic achievement, visual‐motor functioning, and executive functioning; some were further subdivided by their verbal‐versus‐visual modality of functioning. Results: The results revealed no significant difference in basic neurophysiological functions between the patient and control groups, although the case patients' performance scores were lower in attention (p <0.01) and memory (p <0.01), as well as in intellectual functioning (p <.05). Conclusions: The possibility of subtle cognitive deficits in IOLE patients should always be considered, though further studies are necessary to elaborate their precise and long‐term effects.

Neuropsychological abnormalities in children with the Panayiotopoulos syndrome point to parietal lobe dysfunction

“…Subtle and diffuse neuropsychological impairments have been described, ranging from attention, memory, or intellectual dysfunction [6] involvement of visual-perceptive attention and [7] language (reading and writing), arithmetic, and perceptive abilities [8]. Nevertheless, no consistent picture of cognitive dysfunction could be drawn from these previous studies.…”

Possíveis interfaces entre TDAH e epilepsia

“…Sánchez-Carpintero e Neville 7 , em um artigo de revisão, enumeraram alguns estudos que realizaram medidas da atenção entre portadores de epilepsia [37][38][39][41][42][43][44][45] e observaram que crianças com síndromes epilépticas bem definidas apresentam menor desempenho em testes que avaliam a atenção sustentada, porém menos frequentemente prejuízo nos testes de atenção dividida. De modo semelhante, em outro estudo que incluiu 173 crianças com epilepsia crônica, foi documentado um pior desempenho em medidas neuropsicológicas da atenção e da velocidade de processamento na casuística de epilépticos 46 .…”

“…A presença de TDAH por si só parece conferir um aumento de risco ao redor de 2,5 vezes de ocorrerem crises epilépticas 17 . Sintomas de TDAH são comuns em síndromes epilépticas idiopáticas, como na epilepsia benigna da infância com pontas centrotemporais 23,35,37,39,40 , na epilepsia do lobo frontal 50,51 e na epilepsia mioclônica juvenil 43 . Os estudos que realizaram ressonância magnética volumétrica quantitativa cerebral revelaram diferenças anatômicas, confirmando a suspeita de que o TDAH em epilépticos pode estar associado a anormalidades cerebrais estruturais [20][21][22] .…”

There Are Laterality Effects in Memory Functioning in Children/Adolescents With Focal Epilepsy

“…In addition, both TLE and FLE groups had poor verbal memory in a study by Jocic-Jakubi & Jovic (2006). Memory impairment has been found in children with focal epilepsy emanating from other cortical locations as well, including the parietal lobes (Jambaque et al, 1993) and the occipital lobes (Germanò et al, 2005;Gülgönen, Demirbilek, Korkmaz, Dervent, & Townes, 2000). Furthermore, Kernan and colleagues (2012) did not find an effect for localization when studying memory and other cognitions.…”