Clinical determinants of autobiographical memory in patients with unilateral temporal lobe epilepsy

The patient with temporal lobe epilepsy generally has a difficult to control disease, which develops with alterations in autobiographical memory. However, epilepsy is a disease with various clinical factors acting, which help determine the severity and prognosis. The aim of this study was to explore the possible relationship between the performance of patients with temporal lobe epilepsy and hippocampal sclerosis in autobiographical memory and associated clinical variables. The sample was composed by 25 patients diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy. They were supplied with the Autobiographical Memory Interview to assess both the performance in personal semantic memory and autobiographical incidents. The relationship between autobiographical memory performance and associated clinical variables as age of onset, number of years with epilepsy, lateralization of ictal onset zone, drug resistance, type of drug therapy and number of antiepileptic drugs was determined. A Spearman Rho Correlation Coefficient was calculated to measure the correlations between A and B, while Mann-Whitney U test was used to establish between-group differences. Clinical variables such as time of evolution of the disease, polytherapy use and number of antiepileptic drugs, affect autobiographical memory performance in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy. While the temporal lobe epilepsy generates changes in autobiographical memory, various clinical variables associated with the disease, affects even more the patients' memory.