Avaliação da memória operacional, emocional e espacial, em pacientes com epilepsia temporal mesial e pacientes submetidos a lobectomia temporal

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2009

RESUMO

Epileptic seizures may have important cognitive and behavioral impacts on individuals who suffer from epilepsy. The structures of the medial temporal lobe together with adjacent cortical areas, particularly those in the frontal region, are vital for the acquisition and consolidation of declarative memories. Therefore, one of the cognitive functions that can be affected by seizures is declarative memory. In this sense, the main objective of our work was to investigate neurocognitive function, especially emotional and spatial working memories, of patients with unilateral mesial temporal lobe epilepsy and patients submitted to unilateral lobectomy of the medial temporal lobe. A facial recognition test capable of simultaneously recruiting the frontal (operational memory) and medial temporal lobes (emotional memory) was used to investigate emotional working memory and a spatial recognition test with delay was used to investigate spatial working memory. The results show that the factor epilepsy significantly compromised performance in emotional and spatial working memory tests. The results also show that surgical removal of the epileptic focus improved the emotional and spatial working memories of these patients in addition to significantly reducing the number of seizures.

ASSUNTO(S)

lobo temporal epilepsia ciencias da saude emotional memory epilepsy memória emocional temporal lobe

ACESSO AO ARTIGO

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