Do patients with psychogenic nonepileptic seizures produce trustworthy findings on neuropsychological tests?

• Published in: Epilepsia (Copenhagen) 2008-04, Vol.49 (4), p.691-695
• Main Author: Dodrill, Carl B.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adult; Biological and medical sciences; Cognition Disorders - diagnosis; Cognition Disorders - psychology; Degenerative and inherited degenerative diseases of the nervous system. Leukodystrophies. Prion diseases; Effort; Electroencephalography - statistics & numerical data; Epilepsy; Epilepsy - diagnosis; Epilepsy - psychology; Female; Headache. Facial pains. Syncopes. Epilepsia. Intracranial hypertension. Brain oedema. Cerebral palsy; Humans; Male; Medical sciences; Nervous system (semeiology, syndromes); Neurology; Neuropsychological Tests - statistics & numerical data; Neuropsychology; Nonepileptic seizures; Reproducibility of Results; Seizures - diagnosis; Seizures - psychology; Videotape Recording
• ISSN: 0013-9580; 1528-1167
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1528-1167.2007.01457.x

Summary Drane et al. (2006) has recently raised the possibility that patients with psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES) may make poor effort in taking neuropsychological tests in comparison with patients with epilepsy (ES). Therefore, findings previously reported with PNES patients may be in error, especially with regard to tests of mental abilities. Using the same measure of effort used by Drane et al. (2006) but with more broadly selected patients, this paper attempts to replicate their findings with new samples of ES (n = 65) and PNES (n = 32) cases. However, their findings could not be replicated, and no differences in test taking effort could be demonstrated across the groups. The highly selected samples of Drane et al. (2006) appear to be responsible for their results, and neuropsychological findings with PNES patients appear to be as trustworthy as those with ES patients.