Jedan citat iz revbisjkog rada grupe autora koja se najozbiljnije bavi kognicijom i epilepsijom. Nazalost, popularni clanci su mi manje poznati.
Long-term cognitive outcome: is there an “epileptic dementia”?
Little is known about the cognitive long-term development in chronic epilepsies after decades of treatment when epilepsy-related changes may affect physiological cognitive ageing or cognitive deterioriation independent of epilepsy (eg, Alzheimer's disease). One controversial issue concerns progressive long-term cognitive impairment in epilepsy, invoking the “phantom” of an epileptic dementia in epilepsy patients of older age. As mentioned above, chronic epilepsy lasting more than two decades is associated with worse cognitive abilities. In a study on 209 patients divided into groups with less than 15 years, 15–30 years, and more than 30 years of TLE, full-scale IQ was worst in the subgroup with longest duration of TLE. The long-term course of memory functions has rarely been addressed in longitudinal studies with long follow-up intervals. One study found surprisingly stable neuropsychological functioning in a 10 year-follow-up of medically treated patients with TLE. Another study on surgical treatment of TLE with a mean follow-up of 12·8 years reported that in left-sided TLE, the postsurgical memory decline was progressive between the early (1 year after surgery) and late follow-up. In yet another longitudinal study on either surgically or medically treated patients with TLE and follow-up between 2 years and 10 years (median about 50 months), progressive decline preferentially occurred in patients with ongoing seizures, while seizure-free patients improved or recovered from their previous deficits. Although methodically inferior to longitudinal analyses in some respects, cross-sectional studies may more easily give clues to very long-term development. In a comparison of declarative memory and passive knowledge in patients with left-sided medial TLE and normal controls, age regressions for verbal memory (decreasing with age) and vocabulary (increasing with age) were the same in both groups, although the patients showed the expected general impairment in memory, but not in passive knowledge.131 This result does not support the idea of a progressive, epilepsy-associated decline in these functions. It rather suggests an early epilepsy-related deficit, which then takes the course of physiological ageing. In a similar study, age regression of verbal memory in a list learning task was assessed in patients with TLE before and 1 year after anterior temporal lobectomy or selective amygdalohippocampectomy and in healthy controls.133 In the selective amygdalohippocampectomy group, presurgical and postsurgical age regressions of learning and consolidation-retrieval did not differ from those of controls. However, in the group who had anterior temporal lobectomy, consolidation-retrieval was negatively related to age and age at onset of epilepsy even before surgical treatment, while the age regression of learning became steeper after surgery. Hence, although both procedures selectively cause memory decline, only in anterior temporal lobectomy do surgery and reduced compensational capacities accelerate lifetime memory decline.