title: Language treatment prior to anterior temporal lobe surgery: Can naming skills be preserved?
abstract: Epilepsy affects 1% of the general population and is highly prevalent among Veterans. The purpose of this phase I study was to investigate a presurgical linguistically distributed language treatment program that could potentially diminish effects of proper-name retrieval deficits following left anterior temporal lobe resection for intractable epilepsy. A single-subject multiple-baseline design was employed for three individuals with late-onset chronic left temporal lobe epilepsy. Word retrieval treatment was administered prior to anterior temporal lobe resection. The primary outcome measure was confrontation naming of proper nouns. Immediately posttreatment (before surgery), there was a positive effect for all trained stimuli in the form of improved naming as compared with pretreatment. In addition, trained stimuli were found to be better after surgery than they were at pretreatment baseline, which would not be expected had language treatment not been provided. This series of case studies introduces two fundamentally novel concept: that commonly occurring deficits associated with left temporal lobe epilepsy can be treated despite the presence of damaged neural tissue and that providing this treatment prior to surgery can lead to better preservation of language function after surgery than would be expected if the treatment were not provided.
authors.affiliation: Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA.|Department of Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Health Care System, Seattle, WA.
authors.forename: Diane L
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: Kendall
authors.affiliation: Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA.
authors.forename: Irene
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Minkina
authors.affiliation: Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA.
authors.forename: Lauren
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Bislick
authors.affiliation: Integrated Brain Imaging Center, University of Washington, Seattle, WA.|Department of Radiology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA.
authors.forename: Thomas J
authors.initials: TJ
authors.lastname: Grabowski
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA.
authors.forename: Vaishali
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Phatak
authors.affiliation: Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA.
authors.forename: JoAnn P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Silkes
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurological Surgery, University of Washington, Seattle, WA.
authors.forename: Jeffrey G
authors.initials: JG
authors.lastname: Ojemann
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D004833:Epilepsy, Temporal Lobe / Q000601:surgery*; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007806:Language Disorders / Q000209:etiology / Q000628:therapy*; D007807:Language Tests; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000601:surgery
keywords: anterior temporal lobe; aphasia; epilepsy; epilepsy surgery; language; language treatment; name retrieval; proper noun naming; rehabilitation; treatment