Summary:Purpose: Memory deficits in epileptic patients have been found in some, but not all studies assessing the effects of side of seizures and resection from a temporal lobe on cognitive performance. The purpose of this study was to provide a quantitative review of previous studies on this issue.Methods: Based on conventional meta-analytic procedures, we identified 33 studies that assessed verbal and nonverbal memory performance before and after anterior temporal lobectomy. The Logical Memory and Visual Reproduction subtests from the Wechsler Memory Scale were used. These studies were then subjected to two levels of analyses: (a) vote-counting procedure, and (b) effect-size calculations and comparisons.Results: Overall, the data confirmed previous findings that verbal memory tasks are sensitive to left hemisphere dysfunction. The efficacy of a "nonverbal" task for tapping function in the nondominant (right) hemisphere was not confirmed, although a trend supporting this speculation was observed. With regard to the comparison of changes in verbal and nonverbal memory before and after resection from a temporal lobe, a clear trend was observed for decline in verbal memory function after resection from the left, especially significant for immediate verbal recall. A trend for contralateral improvement on nonverbal memory also was observed. The pattern of memory change after resection from the right temporal lobe was less clear.Conclusions: The findings of this study suggest that side of epileptic seizure and surgical resection from a temporal lobe affect verbal memory functions. The relations between the laterality of epileptic seizure, surgical resection from the temporal lobe, and nonverbal memory are to be verified by further research.

Emotion recognition (ER) was examined in 64 patients with idiopathic Parkinson's disease (PD; 56 bilateral and 8 right-sided) and 64 matched healthy volunteers. Participants were administered an ER battery, consisting of the following subscores: overall ER (OER), overall facial ER, facial emotion identification (FEI) and discrimination, overall prosodic ER, and prosodic emotion identification (PEI) and discrimination. Measures of visuospatial functions, auditory attention, and depression were also administered. After controlling for visuospatial functions, auditory attention and depression, results indicated that patients with bilateral PD had poorer performance on all ER subscores, regardless of the modality and type of experimental task involved, relative to healthy volunteers. However, patients with right-sided PD had difficulty on FEI and PEI only. Whereas none of the clinical variables examined in this study predicted any of the ER subscores, visual organization and auditory attention positively predicted OER in patients with PD. In addition, visual organization also positively predicted FEI in these patients. Implications are discussed in terms of the neural substrates underlying ER.

These findings suggest that previous ecstasy consumption can affect a wide range of neuropsychological performance, though figural fluency may be subsequently enhanced as a result of the phenomenon of "cortical disinhibition." Furthermore, measures of verbal and visual memory, switching attention, and verbal fluency may be particularly useful for differentiating abstinent ecstasy users from non-users.

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The findings provide further support for the role of sub-cortical brain structures (and the damage thereof) as well as probable frontal-limbic neural networks in recognizing basic emotions.

These findings further support the speculation of a verbal-non-verbal distinction for cognitive deficits in patients with MS in Hong Kong.

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