PURPOSE This pilot study prospectively evaluated the efficacy of long-term deep brain stimulation (DBS) in medial temporal lobe (MTL) structures in patients with MTL epilepsy. METHODS Twelve consecutive patients with refractory MTL epilepsy were included in this study. The protocol included invasive video-EEG monitoring for ictal-onset localization and evaluation for subsequent stimulation of...

Patients with drug-refractory temporal lobe epilepsy can be treated successfully with surgical resection of one temporal lobe, especially when the resection includes the hippocampus. Although intrahippocampal recordings usually localize seizure onsets to one hippocampus, there are bilaterally-independent interictal spikes, occasional contralateral seizure onsets and post-resection seizures that...

The effects of mesial temporal (MT) and cerebellar hypometabolism were studied using measures of verbal, visual and motor skill learning. Twelve patients with refractory temporal lobe epilepsy who showed asymmetrical mesial temporal lobe hypometabolism on [18F] fluoro-2-deoxy-glucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) were given tests involving 4 consecutive learning trials and a 30-min del...

Neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) is the most common neurocutaneous disease. Main neurologic manifestations are represented by neoplasms such as optic gliomas, but epilepsy can occur by CNS lesions in less than 10%. Our patient was diagnosed, based on café-au-lait spots and axillary freckles. Her brain MRI did not show only multiple CNS lesions, like hamartomas, but also mesial temporal lesions. O...

UNLABELLED FDG PET is often used to help localize the seizure focus before surgery in patients with medically refractory temporal lobe epilepsy. However, the ability of certain patterns of metabolic landscape to predict postsurgical seizure outcome has not been well characterized. The purpose of this retrospective study was to determine whether FDG PET abnormalities elsewhere in the brain, in c...

Gelastic epilepsy or laughing seizures have been historically related to children with hypothalamic hamartomas. We report three adult patients who had gelastic epilepsy, defined as the presence of seizures with a prominent laugh component, including brain imaging, surface/invasive electroencephalography, positron emission tomography, and medical/surgical outcomes. None of the patients had hamar...

Word finding difficulties are often reported by epileptic patients with seizures originating from the language dominant cerebral hemisphere, for example, in temporal lobe epilepsy. Evidence regarding the brain regions underlying this deficit comes from studies of peri-operative electro-cortical stimulation, as well as post-surgical performance. This evidence has highlighted a role for the anter...

background: we evaluated the diagnostic value of electroencephalography (eeg), video-eeg monitoring (vem) and magnetic resonance imaging (mri) of the brain with epilepsy protocol in patients with complex partial epilepsy. methods: forty-two consecutive patients underwent complete neurological examination, eeg, and mri with a modified epilepsy protocol. a subset of these patients (n = 29) also u...