Memory deficits significantly decrease an individual's quality of life and are a pervasive comorbidity of epilepsy. Despite the various distinct processes of memory, the majority of epilepsy research has focused on seizures during the encoding phase of memory, therefore the effects of a seizure on other memory processes is relatively unknown. In…

Epilepsy represents a common neuropsychological disorder in children, which presents a myriad of cognitive, neuropsychological, social, emotional, behavioral, and learning problems. School psychologists are in a unique position to provide psychoeducation, assessment, intervention, and general supports for students with epilepsy and their families.…

Childhood epilepsy is the most common paediatric neurological disorder. It is a condition with a well-documented association with cognitive, behavioural and emotional difficulties. Children with epilepsy are at increased risk of global and specific cognitive impairments. They are also at increased risk for symptoms associated with attention…

We applied near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) and electrocorticography (ECoG) recordings during cortical stimulation to a temporal lobe epilepsy patient who underwent subdural electrode implantation. Using NIRS, changes in blood concentrations of oxyhemoglobin (HbO[subscript 2]) and deoxyhemoglobin (HbR) during cortical stimulation of the left…

The surgical removal of brain tissue for the treatment of temporal lobe epilepsy can be either nonselective, as with an anterior temporal lobectomy (ATL), or selective, as with a selective amygdalohippocampectomy (SAH). Although seizure outcomes are similar with both procedures, cognitive and memory outcomes remain a matter of debate. This study…

An extraordinary variety of experimental (e.g., flicker, magnetic fields) and clinical (epilepsy, migraine) conditions give rise to a surprisingly common set of elementary hallucinations, including spots, geometric patterns, and jagged lines, some of which also have color, depth, motion, and texture. Many of these simple hallucinations fall into a…

Recent neuroimaging studies suggest lateralized cerebral mechanisms in the right temporal parietal junction are involved in complex social and moral reasoning, such as ascribing beliefs to others. Based on this evidence, we tested 3 anterior-resected and 3 complete callosotomy patients along with 22 normal subjects on a reasoning task that…

The functional changes that occur throughout the human brain after the selective removal of an epileptogenic lesion remain unclear. Subtemporal selective amygdalohippocampectomy (SAH) has been advocated as a minimally invasive surgical procedure for patients with medically intractable mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE). We evaluated the effects…

Aim: Epilepsy is associated with difficulties in cognition and behavior in children. These problems have been attributed to genetics, ongoing seizures, psychosocial issues, underlying abnormality of the brain, and/or antiepileptic drugs. In a previous study, we found baseline cognitive differences between children with partial versus generalized…

Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological disorders in children, and it has been associated with an increased risk of cognitive, psychiatric, and learning problems. Although side effects of antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) have been long studied in adults, an understanding of how they manifest in children is only beginning to emerge. Careful…

The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) is the most commonly used intelligence test for children. Five years ago, a Spanish version of the WISC-IV was published (WISC-IV Spanish; Wechsler, 2005), but a limited amount of published information is available regarding its utility when assessing clinical samples. The current study included…

The combined burden of psychosocial (Achenbach scales), cognitive (Raven matrices), and executive function (EF) problems was studied in a population-based sample of 6- to 12-year-old children with epilepsy (n = 162; 99 males, 63 females) and in an age- and sex-matched control group (n = 107; 62 males, 45 females). Approximately 35% of the children…

Word finding difficulties are often reported by epileptic patients with seizures originating from the language dominant cerebral hemisphere, for example, in temporal lobe epilepsy. Evidence regarding the brain regions underlying this deficit comes from studies of peri-operative electro-cortical stimulation, as well as post-surgical performance.…

There is considerable interest in the assessment of executive function (EF) in pediatric clinical populations but only a few well-standardized measures exist. We examined EF in 53 children aged 8 to 18 years with recent onset epilepsy (31 males, 22 females) and 50 control children (23 males, 27 females) using the Behavior Rating Inventory of…

Background: Neurofeedback (NF) is a form of behavioural training aimed at developing skills for self-regulation of brain activity. Within the past decade, several NF studies have been published that tend to overcome the methodological shortcomings of earlier studies. This annotation describes the methodical basis of NF and reviews the evidence…