PRELIMINARY DATA ON BRAIN REPRESENTATION OF EMOTIONAL PROSODY (EP) IN PATIENTS WITH MESIAL TEMPORAL EPILEPSY (MTLE) RESISTANT TO MEDICATION: INSIGHTS ON PLASTICITY.

ALBA FERRARA, L.; GARGIULO, MERCEDES; SABATTE, JULIANA; BENDERSKI, MARIANA; GARGIULO, ANGEL; ACUÑA, ANDRES; KOCHEN, SILVIA

Mar del Plata

Congreso; meeting anual de la Sociedad Argenitna de Neurociencias; 2017

Sociedad Argentina de Neurociencias

Lateralized epileptic seizures let us disentangle functional hemispheric differences. EP, a key social skill, depends mainly on a right temporofrontal circuit, and it is often affected in MTLE. We aim to reveal EP brain representation in right and left MTLE compared to controls (CTRL). 24 CTRL, 8 right-sided MTLE and 4 left-sided MTLE patients did an EP event related fMRI task by classifying utterances with different emotional tones. We acquired 165 volumes with a 2´ RT on a 3T Siemens Trio scanner. We applied random effects analysis with SPM12, computing a BOLD contrast image for each subject. Patient groups were compared to CTRL by t-tests. We compared EP (joy, fear and anger) Vs. baseline (neutral & silence). All groups activated the posterior superior temporal gyrus (STG) bilaterally; and also the bilateral precentral gyrus, right (R) frontal operculum, pallidum and cerebellum, and left (L) hippocampus. Right MTLE patients activated L pars triangularis and precentral gyrus, and R medial cingulate compared to CTRL. Instead, left MTLE patients activated R parahippocampal gyrus compared to CTRL. Our preliminary data replicates previous findings on EP representation in the STG and its associated components (frontal operculum, R pallidum, cerebellum, and hippocampus). Additionally, it suggests EP cerebral reorganization in right MTLE, as they recruited contralateral nodes (L pars triangularis); and in left MTLE, as they recruited right nodes (R parahippocampal gyrus).