Study of the relationship between changes in functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging and memory disorders and depressive symptoms in patients with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy

Abstract

Epilepsy is characterized by recurrence of seizures associated with different etiological substrates, excluding symptomatic seizures caused by acute brain injuries, such as bumps that cause momentary brain or metabolic disorders such as fevers and drug injuries. Seizures have a varying semiology and depends on the cortical region involved. The most common subtype of focal epilepsy is the Mesial Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (MTLE). Daily aspects of life of people with epilepsy are affected by comorbidities that impair cognition and social relationships. While it is widely known that the symptoms of ETL are not necessarily focal, little is known about psychiatric damage caused by this type of epilepsy. The dysfunction of the basal or resting brain (Resting State Network [RSN]), which includes a number of networks that are functionally connected, may have a role in the genesis of cognitive or psychiatric complications. This hypothesis, however, remains speculative and further clinical studies are needed to access the possible correlation between the severity of cognitive impairment and depressive symptoms in patients with TLE and prejudice RSN (Cataldi et al., 2013). This project aims to use functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging to examine possible correlations between the RSN and more specifically the default mode network and the loss of cognitive aspects, such as episodic memory through the WMS-R subtests and rey auditory verbal learning test and the occurrence of depression, as well as investigating the role of the use of antiepileptic drugs and seizure frequency as aggravating factors for cognitive impairments in patients with TLE. (AU)