Pain & Central Nervous System Week via NewsEdge :

2008 MAY 12 - (NewsRx.com) -- "Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) can impair interictal cognitive function (see also Epilepsy). In the perceptual domain, previous psychophysical studies demonstrated specific deficits in auditory and tactile perception in patients with TLE," investigators in the United States report.

"This study compared performance of 25 TLE subjects and 27 controls on two low-level, visual tasks: luminance discrimination and frequency discrimination. Both tasks were performed under a relatively easy and a relatively difficult condition, by adjusting the stimulus duration. TLE subjects performed as well as controls on both tasks at both stimulus durations. These results imply that interictal occipital lobe function, as reflected in performance on low-level visual tasks, is not impaired in TLE, consistent with functional imaging data," wrote A.C. Grant and colleagues.

The researchers concluded: "Furthermore, since TLE subjects performed normally while taking therapeutic doses of multiple AEDs, the data suggest that these AEDs do not impair visual perception."

Grant and colleagues published their study in Epilepsia (Temporal lobe epilepsy does not impair visual perception. Epilepsia, 2008;49(4):710-713).

For additional information, contact A.C. Grant, 403 E 34th St., 4th Floor, New York City, NY 10016, USA.

The publisher of the journal Epilepsia can be contacted at: Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Rd., Oxford OX4 2DQ, Oxon, England.

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