Brain Volumetric Changes and Cognitive Functions in Epileptic Patients

Abstract

Epilepsy is a common serious neurological condition, with a prevalence of 0.5-1%. It affects people of all ages and has no geographic, social, or racial boundaries. Approximately 30% of patients with epilepsy have intellectual disability. Epilepsy related structural and functional connectivity changes have been convincingly shown to correlate with cognitive impairment. In our study we attempted to evaluate the volumetric changes in brain of epileptic patients to use it as a biomarker for cognitive dysfunction. We enrolled 61 patients with epilepsy including 20 patients with idiopathic generalized epilepsy (IGE), 21 patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) and 20 patients with frontal lobe epilepsy (FLE) in addition to 23 healthy controls. All patients were subjected to general history taking and examination, neurological history taking including epilepsy history, neurological examination and sleep EEG. Both patients and controls were subjected to structural MRI brain using 1.5 Tesla machine, applying epilepsy protocol including 3D T1 imaging sequence. Surface volumetry studies were applied to determine whole brain volume, cortical thickness measures and subcortical structures