Hemisphere‐dependent Cognitive Performances in Epileptic Patients

Summary: Short‐term memory (STM), long‐term memory (LTM), and recency judgment were investigated in 75 right‐handed nonaphasic patients without visual deficits who had epileptic foci localized in one of four different regions of the brain: right temporal lobe, left temporal lobe, right frontal lobe, and left frontal lobe. The results led to the following conclusions: (1) left temporal lesions yielded comparatively greater impairment for the verbal LTM task, whereas right temporal lesions were more disruptive for the spatial LTM task; (2) no significant differences between left‐ and right‐brain‐damaged patients in STM tasks were obtained; (3) left frontal lesions yielded deficits in a recency task in accordance with hemispheric specialization; (4) only prolonged epileptic syndroipes impaired neuropsychological performance in those tests; (5) comparisons between male and female patients and between those with and without clear evidence of a structural lesion did not reach statistical significance.

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