title: Changes in verbal and nonverbal memory following anterior temporal lobe surgery for refractory seizures: effects of sex and laterality.
abstract: We studied the effects on verbal and nonverbal memory of anterior temporal lobe (ATL) surgery for epilepsy in 91 patients (46 men, 45 women), all of whom had left-hemisphere dominance for speech. Patients were divided into four groups according to sex and laterality of the excision. The memory tasks were administered shortly before surgery, 6 months postoperatively, and at a 2-year follow-up. Test scores were submitted to repeated-measures analyses of variance. We found that men treated with left temporal resection declined significantly in long-delay verbal memory after surgery, whereas no clear pre- to postoperative sex differences were found with respect to other verbal memory scores. Only the results on long-delay verbal memory confirm previous findings, showing a greater vulnerability of verbal memory to left ATL surgery in men than in women. Women with left temporal excisions obtained particularly poor scores on a long-delay nonverbal memory test preoperatively, but improved their performance on this test significantly after surgery. The seemingly gradual improvement during the 2-year follow-up suggests a plastic process.
authors.affiliation: The National Centre for Epilepsy, Sandvika, Norway. helge.bjornes@epilepsy.no
authors.forename: Helge
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Bjørnaes
authors.forename: Kirsten Engberg
authors.initials: KE
authors.lastname: Stabell
authors.forename: Geir Ketil
authors.initials: GK
authors.lastname: Røste
authors.forename: Søren Jacob
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Bakke
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D038481:Anterior Temporal Lobectomy / Q000379:methods*; D004833:Epilepsy, Temporal Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000601:surgery*; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011184:Postoperative Period; D012727:Sex Characteristics; D016896:Treatment Outcome; D014706:Verbal Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D014888:Wechsler Scales