I know about the link between the cerebral cortex (which plays an important role in memory, attention, perceptual awareness, thought, language) and I would like to find out how a person which suffers from epilepsy can improve their memory.
I think there has to be some neuropsychological tests (to have a clear vision about the affected areas/skills).
Any information about the link between epilepsy and memory could be useful.
Thanks.
Dear Roxana,
Memory deficits arise from cognitive dysfunction during, for example, non-convulsive complex partial seizure activity. Epilepsy medication should prevent this and help improving memory performance.
In my opinion, AEDs acting at the presynaptic level of neuronal communication shall be most effective as they tackle anti-homeostatic disease mechanisms at their roots. See for example http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fncel.2014.00164/full
Seizure control should hence have top priority as it will improve cognitive function as well as memory performance.
Hope this helps.
Kind regards,
Jochen
Hi Alexandra,
There are several epileptic syndromes, and not all of them affect in the same way. For example, Temporal Lobe Epilepsy and Frontal Lobe Epilepsy have their focus on different areas and their neuropsychological profile won't be the same. Identifying and taking into consideration variables like the patient specific epilepsy syndrome, seizure type and localization, age (adult brain doesn't work like a child one), treatment effectiveness in preventing seizures, possible cognitive size-effects associated to anti epileptic drugs... is important for a proper evaluation and so it is for the rehabilitation programme.
Regarding these variables, you could perform a more focal memory assessment or more exhaustive: both verbal and spatial, immediate memory, learning and recall, sentences memory... But remind the human brain is highly interconnected and a cognitive function rarely can be isolated (less if you plan its rehabilitation, which relies in the preserved skills).
Dear Roxana
As you know, during the memory procedure, some changes will occur in synaptic transmission in some brain areas which lead to increasing (or sometime decreasing) the activity of synapses, a process named synaptic plasticity. Occurance of synaptic plasticity, especiallt in the form of long-term potentiation (LTP) is a necessary phenomenon in learning and memory.
When epileptic seizures happen, the hyperactivity of neural circuits will lead to a kind of synaptic plasticity in glutamatergic synapses which increases the synaptic strength. This kind of plasticity (which leads to increase in synaptic strength) is a kind of synaptic potentiation. Thus, in epileptic patients, the synapes are very potentiated, so that it is very difficult to induce a new LTP during learning and memory. Therefore, in these patients, the occurance of LTP is very difficult and this will result to impairement of LTP induction. Impairement of LTP induction will results to memory impairement per se. On the other hand, in epileptic patients, the synapses are so saturated that cannot undergo new potentiation. This is why memory function in epileptic patients is not similar to normal persons.
Of course, we have notice that some antiepileptic drugs can also affect learning and memory.
Hi,
There is more than just LTP that contributes to learning and memory... First of all, synaptic plasticity is bidirectional and includes LTD as well. Second, if the neural network is not able to guide bidirectional synaptic plasticity to the "correct" synapses, for example to to recurrent hypersynchronous network discharge, sensory context-dependent learning can not take place. See for example: http://www.jci.org/articles/view/71472
Thus, it is important to prevent hypersynchronous network discharge as it occurs for example during complex partial seizure activity...
Best regards,
Jochen
It is not a question! It is logically relationship. It ar many, many studies about epilepsy and memory decline.
Thank you for your answers!
As you could see, it was a curiosity for the beggining (just a little research) in order to transform it in a serious research about this topic. I am interested in the link between brain and epilepsy and more specifically about memory and epilepsy.
What intrigues me, is the fact that a person which suffers from a desease (here epilepsy) and it is told to her that has some memory issues (and mostly it is said by a medical stuff, which for most of us is an authority - so we invest a lot their oppinion), takes this statement like an absolute truth, instead of having some neuropsychological tests to see what, how is affected and what the person in this case could do to improve the area involved.
Your suggestions were useful for the beggining of my research, having now some keyword.
Hi Roxana,
There are some good review papers on the matter of memory and epilepsy:
Bell, B.D., & Giovagnoli, A.R. (2007). Recent innovative studies of
memory in temporal lobe epilepsy. Neuropsychological Review,
17, 455–476.
Bell, B., Lin, J., Seidenberg, M., & Hermann, B. (2011).
The neurobiology of cognitive disorders in temporal lobe
epilepsy. Nature Reviews. Neurology, 7, 154–164.
We did some work exploring the extent to which memory deficits in temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) could be explained by metamemory. The results showed that despite the memory deficit observed in TLE patients (mainly due to encoding, probably), no metamemory deficit was observed: Here are the references:
Howard, C., Andrés, P., & Mazzoni, G. (2013). Metamemory in temporal lobe epilepsy: a study of sensitivity to repetition at encoding. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 19, 453-462.
Andrés, P., Mazzoni, G., & Howard, C. (2010). Preserved monitoring and control processes in temporal lobe epilepsy. Neuropsychology, 24, 775-786.
Howard, C., Andrés, P., Broks, P., Noad, R., Sadler, M., Coker, D., & Mazzoni, G. (2010). Memory, metamemory and their dissociation in temporal lobe epilepsy. Neuropsychologia, 48, 921-932.
Please let me know if you are interested in me sending you the pdfs.
Best regards,
Pilar Andrés
Thank you, Pillar! Yes, I would like to have the pdfs. I will be grateful if you can send them to me at [email protected]
Best regards,
Roxana
Dear Roxana,
because temporal lobe structures (including the hippocampus) are crucial for memory (verbal in the left. non-verbal/visual in the right hemisphere), epilepsy may be associated with memory problems. Many studies have addressed this issue (if you do a literature search) on the various forms of memory impairment in epilepsy. Improvement is possible; there exist a variety of measures to achieve this.
best regards
JZ
Please let me know if these references/sites are helpful to you:
1. The Effects of Epilepsy on Memory Function - VA Epilepsy Centers of ...
www.epilepsy.va.gov/library/powerpoint060613.pdfCached
Oct 2, 2012 - •Some people with epilepsy can experience unusual electrical activity within the brain between seizures and this can also affect memory ...
2. Cognitive Effects of Epilepsy - VA Epilepsy Centers of Excellence
https://www.epilepsy.va.gov/Library/Cognitive_Effects_of_Epilepsy.pdfCached
Cognitive effects of Anti-epileptic medications ... between neurons. (specialized ... “A bad connection”. ▫ Over-firing ... Temporal lobe/emotional areas/memory.
3. Memory and epilepsy
www.royalsurrey.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/.../2013epilepsyaction-memoryB099.pd...Cached
Produced by Epilepsy Action in association with the University of Liverpool. .... experience unusual electrical activity within the brain between seizures and this ...
Dennis
Dennis Mazur
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