CHANGES OF P300 LATENCY WITH AGE IN CHILDHOOD EPILEPSY

Auditory event-related potentials (P300 latency; oddball paradigm) wer e examined in 129 patients with childhood epilepsies and 53 controls. The P300 latency in the patients with epilepsies (373 +/- 39.4 ms) was significantly longer than in controls (356 +/- 38.4), and the prolong ation was greatest in the patients with symptomatic partial epilepsies (390 +/- 40.5), mild in those with idiopathic generalized epilepsies (370 +/- 24.3), and minimum in those with idiopathic partial epilepsie s (363 +/- 28.9), Abnormal P300 latency occurred at all ages during ch ildhood in patients with symptomatic partial epilepsies, and at older ages in patients with idiopathic generalized epilepsies, The shortenin g of latency with age was relatively small in patients with epilepsies compared with controls. These results suggest that the prolongation o f P300 latency (i.e., existence of cognitive disturbance) displays cha racteristic changes with age in each epileptic syndrome.