Abstracts

Rationale: Benign childhood epilepsy with centrotemporal spikes (BECTS) is one of the most common focal epileptic syndrome in childhood. Although BECTS patients have good prognosis, recent studies showed neuropsychological impairments in these patients often manifest neuropsychological impairments. This study aimed to investigate resting state functional connectivity (FC), especially in language-related brain regions and their relationship with cognitive dysfunctions in BECTS patients. Methods: In this study, we recruited 59 subjects - 30 BECTS patients (mean age 13.32 2.28 years) and 29 healthy controls (11.62 2.85 years old). Neuropsychological performance was assessed by using the Korean version of Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children IV (K-WISC IV) including verbal Intelligence Quotient (IQ) and performance IQ, and executive function tests. Resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) with high resolution T1 MR image was performed using 3T MRI scanner in all subjects. We selected left/right pars triangularis and par opercularis, as region of interests (ROIs), and analyzed seed-based FC based on these ROIs to whole brain connectivity analysis using statistical parametrical mapping 2008 (SPM8). In addition, we evaluated correlation analysis between FC values of significantly correlated brain regions and various neuropsychological test scores. Results: When we compared control and patient groups, BECTS patients showed impaired cognitive functions, especially in verbal IQ (p = 0.0011) and performance IQ (p = 0.0009). Interestingly, lower verbal IQ scores were correlated with FC between these ROIs to the left superior temporal gyrus (p = 0.0001) and left inferior frontal gyrus (p = 0.0012). Conclusions: Our results suggest that the lower verbal IQ scores in BECTS patients are closely related to the alteration in FC between language-related brain regions especially Broca area including pars triangularis-pars opercularis and left inferior frontal and superior temporal areas in these patients. Funding: Supported by grants of the Korea Health Technology R&D Project through the Korea Health Industry Development Institute (KHIDI), funded by the Ministry of Health & Welfare [H114C1989 to HWL], and of the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation (NRF) by the Ministry of Science, ICT and future planning, Republic of Korea [2014-R1A2A1A11052103 to HWL and 2015R1C1A1A01052438 to CHP].