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

大脑的一部分，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）部分有时会被切除，以治疗一种称为颞叶癫痫（TLE）的癫痫。人们总是担心手术可能会影响病人的语言和记忆。然而，多年来反复发作的癫痫活动可能会导致正常系统的重组。如果这是真的，那么这些证据在临床上和关于正常语言组织的理论中都很重要。手术切除左颞叶前部通常不会引起语言功能的障碍，有些人认为这是该部分不参与语言的证据。然而，来自正常受试者和痴呆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脑组织治疗性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。因此，这项研究解决了理论和实际的临床问题。

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.