White-Matter Integrity and Memory in Epilepsy

Diffusion tensor MRI findings provide a new way to identify memory and language impairment in temporal lobe epilepsy.

These authors studied the association between white-matter structural integrity and language and memory performance in 17 patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) and in 17 age-, education-, and sex-matched controls. The investigators examined correlations between performance on tests of verbal and nonverbal memory and diffusion tensor MRI (DTI) measures of fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (MD) in fiber tracts hypothesized to be involved in language and memory. They used a DTI tractography atlas that included TLE patients to ensure reliable identification of voxels that could contain each fiber tract.

In the patients with TLE, higher MD, lower FA, or both (indicators of loss of tract integrity) in the analyzed tracts correla…

Reviewing Author

Alexandra Golby, MD