Memória prospectiva em pacientes com epilepsia no lobo frontal

• Autor(a) principal: Vasques, Adriana Machado
• Data de Publicação: 2012
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da PUC_RS
• Texto Completo: http://tede2.pucrs.br/tede2/handle/tede/1687
• topic: MEDICINA; NEUROCIÊNCIA; MEMÓRIA; EPILEPSIA; LATERALIDADE; CNPQ::CIENCIAS DA SAUDE::MEDICINA

Introduction: Patients with Frontal Lobe Epilepsy (FLE), although they generally show a good performance in traditional memory tests, they are very forgetful in daily life, which affects their academic, professional and social life. Such forgetfulness is related to Prospective Memory (PM), which consists in recalling, at the appropriate time, an intention to be performed in the future. Objective: This study investigated PM in patients with frontal epilepsy, analyzing the interference of the lesion, laterality and location of the epileptogenic focus in PM performance, as well as its correlation with other memory and executive function tests. Methodology: We conducted a case-control study to evaluate the PM, being comprised of 27 adult patients with frontal lobe epilepsy, confirmed by EEG (electroencephalography), VEEG (video electroencephalography), or MRI (cerebral magnetic resonance imaging). Out of this group, 16 showed lesion on the frontal region and 11 did not show any lesion. A group of 16 adults with no epilepsy formed the control group. All subjects underwent a neuropsychological evaluation, consisting of manual dominance tests, IQ (intelligence quotient) estimated test, verbal memory tests, (immediate and delayed) visual test, PM test, attention, verbal fluency and other executive function tests. They also answered a questionnaire for memory selfevaluation and a scale to identify psychiatric comorbidities. PM was assessed by a test that simulates daily life tasks. Results: The case group (10.3±4.2) showed a significantly lower mean than the control group (15.7±2.1) in the PM test. When comparing the group with lesion to the group with no lesion, they were not significantly different in PM performance. Regarding the lateralization of the epileptogenic focus, the group with bilateral focus had a worse performance in the PM than the group with the focus on the right, though it did not differ significantly from the group with the focus on the left. Conclusion: Patients with frontal lobe epilepsy had a worse prospective memory performance than the control group. The presence or absence of injury did not affect PM performance. Patients with bilateral focus had the worst PM performance. Regarding focus laterality (right or left), there was no difference in PM. PM performance was connected to attention and delayed visual memory.