Emotion Recognition in Benign Epilepsy of Childhood With Centro-Temporal Spikes (BECTS)

Neuromed IRCCS

Status: Unknown

Conditions: BECTS; Epilepsy, Rolandic

Treatments: Diagnostic Test: IDS;MMSPE;CDI 2;CBCL;tests of facial expression evaluation

Study type: Observational

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT03465566

DGN01

Details and patient eligibility

About

The social processes depend on complex cognitive mechanisms, which involve mainly the frontal and temporal lobe regions. Patients with early onset frontal and temporal lobe lesions might later develop important deficits in social integration. Accordingly, children with early onset temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) demonstrate altered emotion recognition.

Full description

Study design: Multicentre, Case-control study.

Emotion recognition is a first step for the development of the capacity to judge the thoughts, intentions, and desires of others. In infants, the capacity to identify, distinguish, and interpret emotions is limited, but these processes are developing rapidly and innately during the first years of life, on the same neural bases as those described in adulthood. Children with BECTS show altered social behavior. In fact, deficit in social cognition could derive from brain dysfunction in the frontotemporal regions primarily affected in BECTS, since these regions are also viewed as playing an important role in social cognition and development of social skills.

The investigators hypothesized that children with BECTS might have altered social cognitive skills and underlying neural networks.

Enrollment: 200 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 6 to 11 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• children diagnosed with active BECTS (e.g. having at least one seizure with epileptiform abnormalities at EEG)
• treated or not with anti-epileptic drugs; age range between 6 and 11
• infants who have not presented an epileptic seizure within 48 hours before the psychodiagnostic evaluation
• patients with a sleep EEG recording; MMSPE (Mini Mental State Pediatric Examination) ≥23.3

Exclusion criteria

• mental retardation
• presence of other neurological or severe neuropsychiatric disorders
• atypical EEG pattern (awake or asleep)

Trial design

200 participants in 2 patient groups

Children with BECTS

Description:

Children with active BECTS according to state-of-the-art diagnostic criteria of ILAE (International League Against Epilepsy). Eligible subjects will be recruited at their first clinical observation in the epilepsy centers involved in the study. All subjects will perform five diagnostic evaluations named: IDS (Intelligence and Development Scale) MMSPE (Mini Mental State Pediatric Examination) CDI 2 (Children Depression Inventory 2) CBCL (Child Behavior Check List) Tests of facial expression evaluation

Treatment:

Diagnostic Test: IDS;MMSPE;CDI 2;CBCL;tests of facial expression evaluation

Healthy children

Description:

Healthy controls matched for sex, age range, and education with no family history for epilepsy or other neuropsychiatric disorders. All subjects will perform the following tests: MMSPE (Mini Mental State Pediatric Examination) CDI 2 (Children Depression Inventory 2) CBCL (Child Behavior Check List) Tests of facial expression evaluation

Treatment:

Diagnostic Test: IDS;MMSPE;CDI 2;CBCL;tests of facial expression evaluation