Moral judgment in patients with idiopathic generalized epilepsy

Abstract

Purpose: The aim of the current study was to investigate morality while also investigating frontal lobe function with the goal of studying the relationship between frontal lobe and morality in patients with idiopathic generalized epilepsy.

Method: A total of 23 right-handed patients with IGE and 25 right-handed healthy participants agreed to participate. Participants made judgments on a series of 50 hypothetical scenarios, which were adapted from a previously published set. The Stroop Test, verbal fluency, Digit Span tests and Wisconsin Card-Sorting Test were used to assess the frontal lobe function.

Results: IGE patients with impaired frontal lobe function choosed more utilitarian options than healthy controls in impersonal dilemmas but not in personal dilemmas. The performance of impersonal judgments were correlated positively with total errors positively and correlated negatively with categories completed.

Conclusions: IGE patients with impaired frontal lobe function possessed unusual impersonal moral decision-making and those decisions may be caused more by cognitive impairment than by social-emotional impairment. Correlation analysis indicated that the unusual moral decisions correlated with frontal lobe dysfunction in patients with IGE.

Keywords: Epilepsy; Frontal lobe function; Idiopathic generalized epilepsy; Moral dilemma; Moral judgment.