Time perception in childhood absence epilepsy: Findings from a pilot study

Cognition of Time and Thinking Beyond

A common research protocol in cognitive neuroscience is to train subjects to perform deliberately designed experiments while recording brain activity, with the aim of understanding the brain mechanisms underlying cognition. However, how the results of this protocol of research can be applied in technology is seldom discussed. Here, I review the studies on time processing of the brain as examples of this research protocol, as well as two main application areas of neuroscience (neuroengineering and brain-inspired artificial intelligence). Time processing is a fundamental dimension of cognition, and time is also an indispensable dimension of any real-world signal to be processed in technology. Therefore, one may expect that the studies of time processing in cognition profoundly influence brain-related technology. Surprisingly, I found that the results from cognitive studies on timing processing are hardly helpful in solving practical problems. This awkward situation may be due to the lack of generalizability of the results of cognitive studies, which are under well-controlled laboratory conditions, to real-life situations. This lack of generalizability may be rooted in the fundamental unknowability of the world (including cognition). Overall, this paper questions and criticizes the usefulness and prospect of the abovementioned research protocol of cognitive neuroscience. I then give three suggestions for future research. First, to improve the generalizability of research, it is better to study brain activity under real-life conditions instead of in well-controlled laboratory experiments. Second, to overcome the unknowability of the world, we can engineer an easily accessible surrogate of the object under investigation, so that we can predict the behavior of the object under investigation by experimenting on the surrogate. Third, the paper calls for technology-oriented research, with the aim of technology creation instead of knowledge discovery.

Executive Functions and Attention in Childhood Epilepsies: A Neuropsychological Hallmark of Dysfunction?

OBJECTIVE

Patients with epilepsy are at risk for several lifetime problems, in which neuropsychological impairments may represent an impacting factor. We evaluated the neuropsychological functions in children suffering from three main epilepsy categories. Further, we analyzed the longitudinal evolution of the neuropsychological profile over time.

METHODS

Patients undergoing neuropsychological evaluation at our Department from 2012 to 2018 were identified retrospectively. We selected patients aged 6-16 years and with at least two evaluations. Three epilepsy categories were considered: focal/structural, focal self-limited, and idiopathic generalized. Each evaluation included the same structured assessment of main neuropsychological domains. The effect of the epilepsy category, illness duration, seizure status, and medication was computed in multilevel models.

RESULTS

We identified 103 patients (focal self-limited = 27; focal/structural = 51; and idiopathic generalized = 25), for 233 evaluations. The majority of deficits were reported in attention and executive functions (>30% of patients); the results were dichotomized to obtain global indexes. Multilevel models showed a trend toward statistical significance of category of epilepsy on the global executive index and of illness duration on global attention index. Illness duration predicted the scores of executive and attention tasks, while category and medication predicted executive task performance. Focal/structural epilepsies mostly affected the executive domain, with deficits persisting over time. By contrast, an ameliorative effect of illness duration for attention was documented in all epilepsies.

CONCLUSIONS

This study offers lacking information about the evolution of deficits in time, the role of epilepsy category, and possible psychological implications for high-order cognitive skills, central in several social and academic problems.