Abstracts

Rationale: In adults, functional brain imaging studies have shown implication of the temporal cortex in processing social stimuli, suggesting that temporal cortex damage is likely to be associated with abnormal socio-perceptive development. Methods: To evaluate the impact of temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) in social abilities we performed a correlation study of certain social abilities (face and voice identity, gaze direction, emotional expression, phrastic and emotional prosody) and brain rest metabolism (PET-FDG) in 25 children with clinical and EEG diagnosis of unilateral TLE (mean age : 10.2yrs, sd: 3.8yrs). Correlations between patients’ performances in each task and regional rest metabolism were computed with a voxel based method (SPM).Results: Patients performances showed major deficits in face recognition, face emotional expression matching and gaze direction matching (see abstract on SPeDeTEC I study by Laurent et al.). Unfrequent deficits were observed in voice recognition, emotional and phrastic prosody matching and lip reading. Correlation between metabolism and performances were found to be significant in all seven tasks. The greater was the performance deficit, the lower was the metabolism. The regional distribution of these correlations differed for each task, and was in agreement with regions that are normally found to be involved in healthy subject’s performances. For example, significant correlations (p<0.001) were found for face recognition only in the pulvinar (bilateral), and the left middle temporal gyrus (BA 21). This pattern was observed in the group with either right or left TLE. For voice recognition, significant correlations (p<0.001) were found in the left transverse temporal gyrus (BA 41), in the left anterior superior temporal gyrus (BA 38) and in the posterior part of the left middle and superior temporal gyrus (BA 21,22). Conclusions: Significant correlations between social performance and rest brain metabolism were found in children with unilateral TLE, indicating an impact of their epilepsy in social skills. In addition, a new methodological approach was used with correlations between rest metabolism and cognitive performances collected outside of the scan. This method might provide an easy way to investigate neural basis of normal and pathological neuropsychological performances in children. Research programme funded by: CNRS, LFCE, FFRE, Fondation Wyeth, ARETNE. Acknowledgements: Philippe Kahane and Lorella Minoti (Grenoble); Edouard Hirsch and Maria-Paola Valenti (Strasbourg); Marie Bourgeois and Christian Sainte-Rose (Paris, Necker); Philippe Ryvlin, and Karine Ostrowsky (Lyon); Francine Chassoux (Paris, Sainte Anne); Dominique Parrain (Rouen); The multicentric network for epilepsy surgery in children.