January 17, 2019

Noninvasive Tests Help ID Seizure Site in Children with Focal Epilepsy

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Dr. Marla Hamberger. Image Credit: MD Magazine

Naming tasks, which have helped to localize and lateralize a seizure onset region for surgery of focal epilepsy in adults, could now be as useful in children, with the recently reported success of a novel, age-specific assessment.

Marla Hamberger, PhD, Director of Neuropsychology, Columbia Comprehensive Epilepsy Center, Columbia University Medical Center, and Professor of Neuropsychology, Department of Neurology, Columbia University, New York, and colleagues posited that neuropsychological assessment with naming tasks have been less reliable in lateralizing the epileptogenic region in children than adults because test designs were not age-appropriate, rather than for age-related differences in neurodevelopment or neuropathology.

“Interestingly, failure to find lateralized deficits in children with previous measures had been interpreted to reflect that language process in children were not yet lateralized or localized,” Hamberger told MD Magazine®.

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