Schacher Martina, Winkler Rebecca, Grunwald Thomas, Kraemer Guenter, Kurthen Martin, Reed Victoria, Jokeit Hennric
Swiss Epilepsy Center, Zurich, Switzerland.
Epilepsia. 2006 Dec;47(12):2141-6. doi: 10.1111/j.1528-1167.2006.00857.x.
Although memory, language, and executive functions have been extensively studied in patients with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE), investigations into advanced social cognitive abilities have been neglected. In the present study, we investigated the ability to detect social faux pas and studied possible mediating clinical and demographic variables in patients with MTLE compared with patients with an epilepsy not originating within the MTLE and healthy controls.
The 27 MTLE patients (16 were investigated pre- and 11 postoperatively), 27 patients with an extramesiotemporal epilepsy (except frontal lobe epilepsy), and 12 healthy controls performed a shortened version of the faux-pas test. Additionally, we used standardized tests to measure intelligence. Only patients with intact reading-comprehension abilities were included in the study.
MTLE patients, both pre- and postoperative, performed the faux-pas test significantly worse than patients with extramesiotemporal lobe epilepsy and healthy controls. The latter two groups showed comparable performance. No statistical association was found between the MTLE patients' deficit in recognizing a faux pas and the variables IQ, age, age at seizure onset, and duration of epilepsy.
We report for the first time that patients with MTLE are specifically impaired in recognizing faux pas, suggesting that MTLE as such is a specific etiology of deficits in higher-order social cognition.
尽管内侧颞叶癫痫（MTLE）患者的记忆、语言和执行功能已得到广泛研究，但对高级社会认知能力的研究却被忽视了。在本研究中，我们调查了MTLE患者检测社交失礼行为的能力，并研究了与非起源于MTLE的癫痫患者及健康对照相比，MTLE患者中可能起中介作用的临床和人口统计学变量。
27例MTLE患者（16例术前、11例术后接受调查）、27例颞叶外癫痫（额叶癫痫除外）患者和12名健康对照者进行了社交失礼行为测试的简化版。此外，我们使用标准化测试来测量智力。只有阅读理解能力完好的患者被纳入研究。
MTLE患者术前和术后在社交失礼行为测试中的表现均显著差于颞叶外癫痫患者和健康对照者。后两组表现相当。在MTLE患者识别社交失礼行为的缺陷与智商、年龄、癫痫发作起始年龄和癫痫持续时间等变量之间未发现统计学关联。
我们首次报告MTLE患者在识别社交失礼行为方面存在特异性损害，提示MTLE本身是高阶社会认知缺陷的一种特定病因。
