PRIMARY MEMORY IN PATIENTS WITH FRONTAL AND PRIMARY GENERALIZED EPILEPSY

A control group, a group with frontal lobe epilepsy, and a group with primary generalized epilepsy were tested on a task of primary, or work ing, memory. Another task controlled for attention, motivation, and ha bituation. The frontal lobe group showed impairment on both tasks, par ticularly the primary memory task and the worst performance on all mea sures. This was true of patients with or without obvious structural le sions. The primary generalized group performed normally on the task of attention but were impaired on the task of primary memory. Neither of these effects could be attributed solely to poor motor skills or anti convulsant drugs. They may be due to persistent postictal effects, int erictal spikes, or spikewave complexes or to the underlying pathophysi ology that is also responsible for the epileptic state.