Abstracts

Rationale: Neuropsychological studies suggest that people with Juvenile Myoclonic Epilepsy (JME) have bad performance in some tests that evaluate cognitive functions associated to the frontal lobes. The purpose of this study was to verify the integrity of executive functions, processes of attention and memory in a group of patients with JME with an extensive neuropsychological battery.Methods: Thirty-one subjects (16 male; QI 86.4 – SD 7.4) diagnosed with JME in the Laboratory of Clinical Neurophysiology of the Institute of Psychiatry of the FMUSP, underwent neuropsychological assessment. Evaluation was made up by seven tests: Digit Span (WMS-R), Stroop Color Test, Trail Making Test, Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCTS), Verbal Fluency (FAS), Logical Memory I and II (WMS-R), Visual Reproduction I and II (WMS-R). Performance of JME group was compared with normative data.Results: We observed that 93.54% (29/31) of the patients with JME presented a bad performance in Digit Forward; 90.32% (28/31) in execution time of the Stroop Color Test; 87.09% (27/31) in Digit Backforward; 74.19% (23/31) in Verbal Fluency, and failures in maintaing sets in the WCST; 61.29% (19/31) in the Trail Making Test; and 54.83% (17/31) in the total of errors in the Stroop Color Test. We also observed that 83.87% (26/31) of the patients presented normal performance in Visual Reproduction I and II; and 80.64% (25/31) in Logical Memory I and II.Conclusions: Our findings suggest that patients with JME present a tendency for global impairments of the attentional sphere, from the most basic processes of attention (alert and attentional span), to more complex processes such as those that demand divided attention. Patients with JME also presented a strong tendency to bad performance in tests of executive functions, showing impairments of the abilities of working memory, inhibitory control and maintenance of goals. However, we observed that in its majority, patients showed preserved capacities in immediate and delayed memory for both verbal and visual spheres. These findings corroborate previous studies that identified frontal lobe dysfunction in patients with JME.