Preoperative neuropsychological presentation of patients with refractory frontal lobe epilepsy

• Published in: Acta neurochirurgica 2016-06, Vol.158 (6), p.1139-1150
• Main Authors: Patrikelis, Panayiotis, Gatzonis, Stylianos, Siatouni, Anna, Angelopoulos, Elias, Konstantakopoulos, George, Takousi, Maria, Sakas, Damianos E., Zalonis, Ioannis
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Attention; Case-Control Studies; Cognition; Drug Resistant Epilepsy - diagnosis; Drug Resistant Epilepsy - surgery; Epilepsy; Epilepsy, Frontal Lobe - diagnosis; Epilepsy, Frontal Lobe - surgery; Experimental Research - Neurosurgical Anatomy; Female; Humans; Interventional Radiology; Male; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Middle Aged; Minimally Invasive Surgery; Neurology; Neuropsychological Tests; Neuroradiology; Neurosurgery; Neurosurgical Procedures - methods; Patient Selection; Preoperative Period; Surgical Orthopedics
• ISSN: 0001-6268; 0942-0940
• DOI: 10.1007/s00701-016-2786-4

Background This study investigated whether certain cognitive deficits are associated with frontal lobe epilepsy (FLE) aiming to contribute with localization data to the preoperative assessment of epilepsy surgery candidates. Methods We evaluated 34 patients with refractory FLE, 37 patients with refractory medial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE), and 22 healthy individuals in attention, psychomotor speed, motor function, verbal memory span, verbal fluency, response inhibition/interference, concept formation and set shifting, anticipation and planning, global memory. Results Neuropsychological performances of FLE and MTLE were similar, with the only exception the WCST-number of categories index, measuring mental flexibility, in which MTLE patients performed significantly worse than FLE patients. Left-FLE patients presented more perseverative responding compared to both other patient groups and healthy controls (HCs), while left-MTLE patients showed worse sorting abilities than the other epilepsy groups. Conclusions Our findings suggest a weak cognitive differentiation between FLE and MTLE, probably attributed to the intricate nature of fronto-temporal connectivity frequently resulting in overlapping deficits as well as the confounding effects of seizure-related variables. In clinical practice, a highly individualized (idiographic) neuropsychological approach along with the inclusion of concurrent EEG recordings (e.g., interictal coupling) may be of help for neuropsychologists in identifying FLE patients from those with medial temporal pathology presenting frontal dysfunction as a secondary cognitive symptom.