Cognitive Impairment Moderated by Working Memory in Pediatric Partial Epilepsy

描述（由申请人提供）：候选人的申请提供了必要的培训，以建立一个致力于确定癫痫认知并发症的易感因素的临床研究生涯，这是符合NIH治愈癫痫基准。候选人是一名临床儿科神经心理学家，他建议从神经学家首席共同导师，神经心理学家首席共同导师和杰出的专家导师小组以及先进的MRI技术，发展认知神经科学，神经心理学和生物统计学的贡献者那里获得跨学科培训。这是一项对50名患有局部相关癫痫的儿童进行的横断面研究，这些儿童将与年龄，性别和SES的健康对照组相匹配。先进的神经科学方法将被用来调查的功能和结构的神经解剖学的言语工作记忆。工作记忆，语言和其他认知领域将通过进行神经心理学测试进行检查，然后所有儿童将参加功能和结构神经成像任务。据推测，癫痫儿童在工作记忆方面会有特定的弱点，并且在激活的大脑区域的结构和功能方面表现出更大的偏差。这些结果对于开发特定的基于大脑的认知障碍的知情模型至关重要，以确定和衡量未来的治疗方法。这种培训将使候选人获得独特的跨学科培训，使用综合神经影像学和神经心理学方法。候选人也将处于有利地位，在她的职业生涯中将这种方法过渡到其他神经发育障碍。 公共卫生相关性：癫痫儿童经常经历行为和认知困难。困难的一个领域是执行功能，这是一组对有效执行任务很重要的技能。本研究采用神经影像学和神经心理学方法，对癫痫儿童执行功能的一个方面，即工作记忆的神经网络进行了表征。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The candidate's application provides the requisite training to establish a clinical research career committed to identify the susceptibility factors in the cognitive comorbidity of epilepsy which is in line with NIH Curing Epilepsy Benchmarks. The candidate is a clinical pediatric neuropsychologist who is proposing to obtain cross-disciplinary training from a neurologist lead co-mentor, neuropsychologist lead co-mentor and distinguished panel of expert mentors and contributors in advanced MRI techniques, developmental cognitive neuroscience, neuropsychology, and biostatistics. This is a cross-sectional study of 50 children with localization related epilepsy who will be matched to healthy controls for age, gender, and SES. Sophisticated neuroscience methods will be used to investigate the functional and structural neuroanatomy of verbal working memory. Working memory, language, and other cognitive domains will be examined by conducting neuropsychological testing, and then all children will participate in functional and structural neuroimaging tasks. It is hypothesized that children with epilepsy will have specific weaknesses in working memory and show greater deviance in the structure and function of brain regions activated. These results will be crucial for developing an informed model of specific brain based cognitive impairments to base and measure future treatments against. This training will enable the candidate to obtain unique cross-disciplinary training using integrated neuroimaging and neuropsychology methods. The candidate will also be well-situated to transition this methodology into other neurodevelopmental disorders over the duration of her career. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Children with epilepsy often experience behavioral and cognitive difficulties. One area of difficulty is executive functioning which is a set of skills important for efficient task performance. This study characterizes the neural network of one aspect of executive functioning, namely working memory, in children with epilepsy using neuroimaging and neuropsychological measures.