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Adhesio interthalamica and cavum septum pellucidum in mesial temporal lobe epilepsy

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Abstract

The absence of the adhesio interthalamica (AI; also called interthalamic adhesion or massa intermedia) and the presence of a large cavum septum pellucidum (CSP) later in life have been related to neurodevelopmental alterations and have not been systematically investigated in epilepsy to date. This study carried out a MRI evaluation of the AI and CSP in a large sample with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE). A total of 179 patients, classified according to the side of the epileptogenic focus, and 156 age- and sex-balanced healthy controls were assessed. Between-group comparisons of the prevalence and length of both AI and CSP were conducted. Neuropsychological assessments were also performed in 160 MTLE patients. The patients exhibited reduction in the AI prevalence (P < 0.05; FDR-uncorrected) and length (P < 0.05; FDR-corrected) when compared to controls. Patients without AI showed lower scores in a proportion of neuropsychological tests than patients with AI. No CSP differences were found between MTLE patients and controls. These results support that AI anomalies have clinical significance in MTLE, as well as indicate that neurodevelopmental alterations may be implicated in this disorder.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Jaqueline Macarios Silva e Silva and to Gustavo de Freitas Caetano for their collaboration in setting this database.

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Correspondence to Clarissa Trzesniak.

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Funding

The author CT was funded by ‘Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior’ (CAPES-Brazil, process number 5797/09-8), by ‘Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo’ (FAPESP-Brazil, process number 08/57847-7) and by ‘Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico’ (CNPq-Brazil, process number 151056/2012-9). The authors GFB, JAC, and JEH are recipients of a CNPq fellowship Award. The funding agencies had no further role in: study design; the collection, analysis and interpretation of the data; the writing of the report; and the decision to submit the paper for publication.

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The authors report no financial or nonfinancial conflicts of interest associated with this study.

Ethical approval

This study was approved by the local ethical committee (No. 4462/2008). The authors ensure that all procedures performed in the current study were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors.

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As described in the section Methods, informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the current study.

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Trzesniak, C., Linares, I.M., Coimbra, É.R. et al. Adhesio interthalamica and cavum septum pellucidum in mesial temporal lobe epilepsy. Brain Imaging and Behavior 10, 849–856 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-015-9461-x

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