UNILATERAL TEMPORAL-LOBE EPILEPSY - AN EXAMINATION OF PSYCHOPATHOLOGYAND PSYCHOSOCIAL BEHAVIOR

To investigate the hypothesis that patients with intractable left or r ight temporal lobe seizures manifest different interictal emotional pr esentations, the responses of 20 patients with left and 20 with right temporal lobe foci to a combined version of the California Psychologic al Inventory and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (CPI- MMPI) were analyzed. The CPI-MMPI was administered as part of a routin e presurgical neuropsychological examination. Laterality of seizure fo cus was ascertained on the basis of EEG studies and was confirmed by t he fact that all patients included in the study were seizure-free at t he time of their 6-month follow-up postsurgical examinations. Two-tail ed t tests revealed that the two groups (matched with regard to gender and age) were not significantly different (i.e., p > 0.01) with regar d to any of the 36 CPI-MMPI scales. Item analysis using serial Chi-squ are analyses revealed that the left and right groups differed signific antly (p < 0.01) on only three of the 704 items of the CPI-MMPI; appro ximately seven items could be expected to be significant at the 0.01 l evel by chance alone. These results do not support the notion that lat eralized epileptogenic foci within the temporal lobes are associated w ith different levels of anxiety, depression, or other emotional sympto ms or differences in psychosocial behavior as measured by the CPI-MMPI .