Abstracts

Rationale: Studies of patients with temporal lobe epilepsy had shown difficulties in processes regulated by the prefrontal cortex, and it had shown that this area is affected by its direct connection with medial areas such as the parahippocampal cortex and hippocampus (Simons and Spiers. Nat Rev Neurosci 2003; 4: 637-648). It results very important to evaluate the frontal and temporal lobe interaction because executive functions are regulated by them, and they are necessary for the daily life are necessary for the daily life. To evaluate the execution and the metabolic activation during the Stroop test in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy patients. Methods: Temporal lobe epilepsy patients, resistant to pharmacological treatment had been evaluated in three groups according to their epilepsy laterality: left (3), right (3) and bilateral (4). They were tested with the Stroop test, that consists naming the ink color in which the word is written, but with the name of another color (i.e., the word green is written with red color). This test was programed in the E-Prime 1.1 software, that let us register the reaction time and the type of responses. This test was evaluated in Functional Magnetic Resonance with the BOLD technique (Blood Oxygen Level Dependent) and it was analyzed through Matlab 7 and SPS 2 software. (Rajah MN. et al, Brain 2005; 128:1964-1983). Results: In left focus patients it has been found an activation prevalence on 10, 9, 39 and 40 Brodmann s areas and bilateral cerebellum; in right focus patients, 10 and 11 areas, and right cerebellum hemisphere; and in bilateral patients, 9, 7, 17 and 18 areas and right cerebellum hemisphere. Left patients obtained lower reaction times and more mistakes than right and bilateral patients. Conclusions: It has been found difference in the metabolic activation of different functional areas between groups as well as the reaction times for the test Stroop performance. In metabolic activation, patients with left and bilateral epilepsy showed more activation and involvement of anterior and posterior areas than right patients, which might suggests that patients with right focus may be more involved in networks that make us infer that these patients have a greater cognitive reserve, compared with patients with epilepsy right showed a lower metabolic demand. Study partially funded by DGAPA UNAM, IN228409.