Cognitive dysfunction in drug-naïve late-onset temporal lobe epilepsy.

Objectives: To evaluate cognitive functions including memory in middle-aged and elderly patients with antiseizure drug-naïve late-onset temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE).

Methods: We performed assessments with the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-III (WAIS-III) and Wechsler Memory Scale-Revised (WMS-R) in 26 antiseizure drug-naïve patients with late-onset TLE, in comparison to 30 healthy subjects. We investigated the relationships between these cognitive function scores and clinical characteristics, seizure frequency, and frequency of interictal epileptic discharges (IEDs).

Clinical and neuropsychological changes after the disappearance of seizures in a case of transient epileptic amnesia.

We encountered a female patient with late-onset temporal lobe epilepsy who presented with transient amnesia as the sole ictal manifestation, an accelerated rate of forgetting daily life events, and a retrograde memory deficit. We describe the memory function of the patient both before and after the administration of antiseizure medication. After the patient's seizures were controlled with antiseizure drugs, her neuropsychological memory performance scores showed improvement.

Subacute postictal aggression in patients with epilepsy.

Three men with epilepsy (age range, 38-62) who exhibited brief episodes of violent behavior during the postictal period are described. Disease duration ranged from 27 to 44 years. Patients had both complex partial seizures and secondarily generalized tonic-clonic seizures, which were refractory to antiepileptic drugs.

Intellectual prognosis of status epilepticus in adult epilepsy patients: analysis with Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-revised.

Purpose: Status epilepticus (SE) appears to cause cognitive dysfunction as well as other serious neurologic sequelae. To confirm whether SE produces a subsequent intellectual decline, we evaluated intellectual function prospectively in adult epilepsy patients with and without SE.

Methods: Of 1,685 patients with epilepsy who underwent comprehensive neuropsychological testing in two national hospitals in Japan, 15 patients experienced an episode of SE afterward and underwent the second neuropsychological examination after the SE episode.

Intellectual disability and psychotic disorders of adult epilepsy.

Purpose: To investigate the prevalence, psychopathology, and cognitive functions associated with psychotic disorders among adult epilepsy patients with intellectual disability (ID) based on a multicenter study in Japan.

Methods: The study was divided into three phases: a prevalence study of psychotic disorders among new referrals of epilepsy, a polydiagnostic comparative study of patients with psychotic epilepsy and those with schizophrenia, and a neuropsychological study of patients with psychotic epilepsy and education level-matched controls.

Results: Among 336 new referrals of epilepsy, a higher prevalence of psychotic disorders was found among patients with ID (24%) than among those with normal intelligence (6%).