Abstracts

Determine the effect of left frontal (LF) versus right frontal (RF) lobe epilepsy on Boston Naming Test (BNT) and Controlled Oral Word Association Test (COWA) performance. A retrospective database study of epilepsy patients who had undergone a pre- surgical neuropsychological evaluation between 1991 and 2004. Only those patients demonstrating localized pathology evidenced by MRI imaging and video EEG monitoring that subsequently underwent left or right frontal surgery were included for comparison. Past research on other patient populations with focal LF lesions has demonstrated relative deficits in phonemic fluency and confrontation naming compared to patients with focal RF lesions. Raw test scores of 30 patients who had left (n=15) or right (n=15) frontal resections in Milwaukee at the Medical College of Wisconsin or St. Luke[rsquo]s Medical Center from 1991 to 2004 were analyzed using independent samples [italic]t[/italic] tests. Age of onset, gender, education level, and FSIQ did not differ between LF and RF groups, although they did differ in age at time of pre-surgical neuropsychological testing (LF=27.1 years, RF=35.9 years, F=12.76, p = .001). The LF group performed significantly worse than the RF group on the BNT (LF=44.5, RF=52.4, F=10.29, p [lt] .01)(raw scores). The LF and RF groups were not significantly different in COWA performance (LF=31.9, RF=25.6, F=.059, p=.811)(age and education corrected raw scores). LF lobe epilepsy patients demonstrated the expected deficit in confrontation naming as compared to RF lobe epilepsy patients, but did not demonstrate the expected deficit in phonemic fluency evidenced by LF lesion patients from past research. Further research is needed to explore this dissociation in patient populations.