Cognitive Profile and Depressive Symptoms in Patients With Epilepsy

Background and Objective. The aim of the present study was to describe the cognitive profile of patients with focal and generalized epilepsy syndrome in comparison with healthy control subjects and to investigate whether depression was related to neuropsychological functioning in these patients.
Material and Methods. A total of 36 patients with focal epilepsy and 26 patients with generalized epilepsy were compared with the control group of healthy volunteers (n=53). A battery of neuropsychological tests assessing verbal and visual spatial memory and executive functioning was carried out in addition to the completion of the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI).
Results. The results indicated that patients with epilepsy performed significantly worse than controls on all verbal memory subscales and verbal fluency domains. The patients with focal epilepsy scored significantly worse than the patients with generalized epilepsy. The BDI scores were significantly correlated with several scores of the cognitive test in both patients’ groups but not in the control group.
Conclusions. Our results suggest that patients with epilepsy, especially with focal-onset epilepsy, show cognitive disturbances predominantly in the verbal memory domain. In addition, depression was found to have a negative effect on cognitive functioning in patients with epilepsy.