NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL RISKS IN COGNITIVE INF ORMATION-PROCESSING IN CHILDREN WITH EPILEPSY

Neuropsychological studies could demonstrate increased risk for impair ed attention and short term memory as well as a general reduced inform ation processing speed in childhood's epilepsy. Up to now it is not to tally understood if focal EEG-pathology represents a specific cognitiv e deficit strongly related to the corresponding hemisphere's functions or represents a less lateralized but more general cognitive deficit o f both cerebral hemispheres. In a sample of 44 pediatric patients with epilepsy we studied sequential and simultaneous cognitive information processing. As a major result a general decreased function in cogniti ve information processing (more sequential than simultaneous) has been found. There was no correlation with the localization of an EEG-Focus nor with the hand preference. According to previous studies patients with an increased number of medical drugs or with presence of neurorad iological lesions are at greatest risk for cognitive impairment. Our d ata indicate a possible affection of underlying metamemory functions.