Abstracts

Neuropsychological aspects in juvenile myoclonic epilepsy (JME) have been discussed, although few studies were conducted aiming to clarify the possible frontal dysfunctions suggested in literature. The propose of this study was to evaluate the cognitive functions of a series of JME patients compared to normal subjects from community, identifying and charactherizing the alterations in frontal functions., Fifty patients (48 treated with VPA and 2 with TPM) with JME followed for at least six months at the outpatient epilepsy clinic of Universidade Federal de S[atilde]o Paulo, Brazil, and 50 healthy individuals selected from community were evaluated between January 2005 and January 2006. The groups were paired in relation to sex, age, schooling and socioeconomic status. The neuropsychological assessment was done through Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS-III), Logical Memory and Visual Reproduction from Wechsler Memory Scale (WMS-R), language tests such as Boston Naming Test (BNT) and Verbal Fluency (FAS, animal naming), Stroop and Trail Making Test for executive functions. Groups had raw and scaled scores compared. For statistical analysis, the Student[apos]s T test was used. A [italic]p[/italic] value [lt] 0.05 was considered significant., The JME group showed normal intelligence when evaluated through WAIS-III, with worse performance than controls in Full Scale IQ (p=0.01), Verbal Scale IQ (p=0.006); Working Memory Index (p=0.014), Processing Speed Index (p=0.004), subtests Picture Completion (p=0.002), Digit Symbol (p=0.014), Arithmetic (p=0.014) and Digit Span (p=0.014). The JME group also had impaired performance in immediate (p=0.007) and delayed (p=0.015) recalls in verbal memory evaluated through WMS-R, in BNT (p=0.014), Stroop I (p=0.002) and Stoop III (p=0.0002)., JME patients showed impaired performance in several aspects of neuropsychological assessment, such as attention, visual perception, language, immediate and delayed verbal memory, control of inhibition, working memory and processing speed. These results suggest frontal lobe dysfunction and deficits in naming, visual perception and verbal memory., (Supported by [underline]FAPESP[/underline] (Funda[ccedil][atilde]o de Amparo [agrave] Pesquisa do Estado de S[atilde]o Paulo) and [underline]CAPES[/underline] (Coordena[ccedil][atilde]o de Aperfei[ccedil]oamento de Pessoal de N[iacute]vel Superior)/[underline]CNPq[/underline] (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cient[iacute]fico e Tecnol[oacute]gico).)