Myatchin Ivan, Mennes Maarten, Wouters Heidi, Stiers Peter, Lagae Lieven
Department of Woman and Child, Section Paediatric Neurology, K.U.Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
Epilepsy Res. 2009 Oct;86(2-3):183-90. doi: 10.1016/j.eplepsyres.2009.06.004. Epub 2009 Jul 16.
The aim of this study was to find out whether children with idiopathic epilepsy did show different cortical activation patterns compared to non-epileptic children during performance of a working memory task. To this end event-related potentials (ERPs) were measured during a visual 1-backmatching task. A quantitative analysis technique to analyze the ERP data, without any 'a priori' decisions on 'peak' presence, amplitudes or latencies, is used.
46 children were tested (6-16 years old): 21 children with well-controlled "benign" epilepsy (benign rolandic epilepsy, n=9, idiopathic generalized epilepsy, n=12) and a control group of 25 non-epileptic children. Behavioral task performance and ERPs following both target and nontarget stimuli were compared across both study groups.
No differences were found in the number of omission errors or commission errors or in the reaction times between groups. However, ERPs following target stimuli showed significantly higher amplitude in the epilepsy group compared to the control group over frontal and central regions within the time window between 250 and 425 ms poststimulus, what coincides with the time window of target-nontarget stimulus discrimination.
Our study shows that children with benign, well-controlled epilepsy show a different cortical activation pattern during a visual working memory task. We hypothesize that they need more brain processing effort to achieve the same performance level as their age matched controls.
本研究旨在探究特发性癫痫患儿在执行工作记忆任务时，与非癫痫患儿相比，是否表现出不同的皮质激活模式。为此，在视觉1-回溯匹配任务期间测量了事件相关电位（ERP）。使用了一种定量分析技术来分析ERP数据，无需对“峰值”的存在、幅度或潜伏期进行任何“先验”决策。
对46名儿童（6-16岁）进行了测试：21名患有控制良好的“良性”癫痫的儿童（良性罗兰多癫痫，n = 9；特发性全身性癫痫，n = 12）和25名非癫痫儿童组成的对照组。比较了两个研究组在目标刺激和非目标刺激后的行为任务表现和ERP。
两组之间在遗漏错误或误判错误的数量或反应时间方面均未发现差异。然而，在刺激后250至425毫秒的时间窗口内，癫痫组在额叶和中央区域对目标刺激的ERP幅度明显高于对照组，这与目标-非目标刺激辨别时间窗口一致。
我们的研究表明，患有良性、控制良好的癫痫的儿童在视觉工作记忆任务期间表现出不同的皮质激活模式。我们假设，与年龄匹配的对照组相比，他们需要更多的大脑处理努力才能达到相同的表现水平。
