The aim of the study: To evaluate the effects of neuropsychological activation (NPA) tasks on epileptiform discharges in adolescents with idiopathic generalized epilepsy (IGE) and their possible relationship to clinical epilepsy-related factors, also to compare the effects of the NPA to the habitual methods of electroencephalographic (EEG) activation.
Methods/subjects: Fifty-nine patients with IGE aged 14-17 years underwent baseline video-EEG recording with habitual activation procedures followed by NPA tasks, and sleep EEG after sleep deprivation on the next day.
Results: At least one task of NPA showed provocative effect in 18.6% of cases. There was no difference between the provocative effects of action-programming and thinking NPA task groups as well as among individual NPA tasks. The provocative effects of NPA tasks were more prevalent in photosensitive cases, especially the tasks of action-programming type (p=0.04). The provocative NPA effects showed no relationship to gender, age, age at seizure onset, duration of epilepsy, treatment status, presence of myoclonias, recent generalized tonic-clonic seizures, family history of epilepsy. The provocative effects of NPA were comparable to those of hyperventilation (23.7%) and intermittent light stimulation (30.5%) (p>0.05).
Conclusions: Although the provocative effects NPA tasks on epileptiform discharges on EEG did not outweigh the effects of the habitual activation procedures, NPA activation might be helpful as an additional diagnostic tool in adolescents with IGE in selected cases when routine EEG is not informative enough or when sleep EEG is readily unavailable, also in photosensitive cases. It may also help in providing advice for patients on safety issues.
Keywords: Adolescence; Cognitive; Epileptiform discharges; Idiopathic generalized epilepsy; Neuropsychological activation.
Copyright © 2014 The Japanese Society of Child Neurology. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.