Investigation of the reorganisation of language and verbal memory systems in chronic temporal lobe epilepsy.

大脑的一部分，即左颞叶，在理解语言方面很重要。颞叶的前部（前部）和内侧（内侧）部分有时被切除以治疗一种称为颞叶癫痫（TLE）的癫痫。人们一直担心手术可能会影响病人的语言和记忆。然而，多年反复的癫痫活动可能导致正常系统的重组。如果这是真的，那么这些证据在临床和关于正常语言组织的理论方面都很重要。手术切除左颞叶前部通常不会对语言功能造成什么干扰，有人认为这是该部分不参与语言功能的证据。然而，来自正常受试者和某种痴呆症患者的脑成像研究的其他证据表明，情况并非如此，并且不能从癫痫患者治疗性脑组织切除的结果中推断出正常功能。此外，语言是广泛分布的大脑区域之间相互作用的精神产物，我们将研究慢性癫痫是否会导致这些连接的重组作为一种适应。因此，本研究解决了理论和临床实践问题。

Part of the brain, the left temporal lobe, is important in the comprehension of language. The front (anterior) and inner (medial) part of the temporal lobe is sometimes removed to treat a form of epilepsy known as temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). There is always concern that the operation may affect the patient‘s language and memory. However, repeated epileptic activity over years may result in reorganisation of the normal systems. If true, such evidence would be important both clinically and for theories about normal language organisation. Surgical removal of the anterior left temporal lobe usually causes little disturbance of language function, and some regard this as evidence that this part is not involved in language. However, other evidence, both from brain imaging studies on normal subjects and from patients with a type of dementia, suggests that this is not the case, and that normal function cannot be inferred from the outcome of therapeutic removal of brain tissue in epileptic patients. Further, language is the mental product of interactions between widely distributed brain regions, and we will investigate whether chronic epilepsy results in reorganisation of these connections as an adaptation. Therefore, this study addresses both theoretical and practical clinical issues.