Emotional declarative memory assessment of patients with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy and patients submitted to mesial temporal lobectomy.
Epileptic seizures generate cognitive and behavioral impacts in individuals who suffer from epilepsy. Declarative memory is one of the cognitive functions that can be affected by epileptic seizures. The main objective of this work was to investigate neurocognitive function, especially the emotional working memory of patients with unilateral mesial temporal lobe epilepsy, and that of patients submitted to unilateral mesial temporal lobectomy. A face recognition test that can simultaneously recruit the frontal lobe (working memory) and mesial temporal lobe (emotional memory) was used to investigate emotional working memory. Our findings showed that the epilepsy factor significantly compromised the performance in the emotional memory test. On the other hand, surgical removal of the epileptic focus promoted an improvement in the emotional working memory of these patients, in addition to the significantly decrease in the number of seizures.
Graduate Program in Health Sciences, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Brasília, Brasília, DF, Brazil.
Lara De Vecchi
Lde V
Machado
Jean Edith
JE
Frank
Carlos
C
Tomaz
D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D038481:Anterior Temporal Lobectomy; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D004833:Epilepsy, Temporal Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology / Q000601:surgery*; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D012737:Sex Factors; D016896:Treatment Outcome