The impact of cognitive rehabilitation on executive functions and social functioning in pacients with Juvenile Myoclonic Epilepsy

Abstract

Juvenile Myoclonic Epilepsy (JME) is a genetically determined generalized epileptic syndrome, which begins in adolescence. There is evidence on the presence of specific impairments associated with JME in classic components of Executive Functions, as well as, the presence of impulsive personality traits. These patients may have worse performance than controls on tests that require concept formation, mental flexibility, attention, and inhibitory control.To date, there is no study on the impact of cognitive rehabilitation in this group of patients. This is a longitudinal and controlled study that aims to evaluate the impact of rehabilitation on executive functions and on different aspects of the social functioning in patients with JME. For this purpose, 40 patients with JME assessed with a comprehensive battery of neuropsychological tests will be divided into two groups: 20 patients will be compose the experimental group and will be approached by an individual intervention with the Protocol of Cognitive Rehabilitation proposed in this work. The others will comprise the control group that will not undergo any intervention prior to reevaluation and data analysis (wait list). The intervention will take 12 consecutive weeks. After this period of time, both groups will be reevaluated with a neuropsychological assessment, ecological measures for executive functions, scale of social adequacy scale and quality of life questionnaire. The results will be analyzed statistically through the ANOVA of repeated measures within groups (Experimental vs Control) and time (T0 and T1) as factors included, with a significance level of 0.05 and a 95% confidence interval. (AU)