NCT06847152

Spatial Memory and Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

• Status: Recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 37 (estimated)
• Sponsor: Centre Hospitalier Metropole Savoie · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) can cause memory disorders, including long-term forgetfulness due to a failure to consolidate verbal but also spatial information. The forgetting phenomenon presented by these epileptic patients is called accelerated forgetting in the literature and remains difficult to objectify during cognitive assessments. It is indeed particularly complicated to evaluate long-term spatial memory and to account for the topographical complaint, although recurrent, of patients with this TLE. A navigation task being proposed as part of the neuropsychological assessment of patients with a spatial memory complaint, it is interesting to study the performance pattern of patients with TLE by comparing them to a group of control subjects matched in age and gender in order to verify whether there is significant long-term forgetting and whether there is a significant difference between Right TLE and Left TLE. Indeed, several studies have demonstrated this accelerated long-term forgetting in epileptic patients (Cassel et al., 2016; Lemesle et al., 2017; Landry et al., 2022; Blake et al., 2020) but few with a retention delay of several weeks (Tramoni et al., 2009). This study allows us to statistically analyze the effects of these two groups: epileptic patients and healthy volunteers, but also to combine the effect of the laterality of epilepsy specifically on spatial memory performance.

Detailed description

In order to assess the long-term spatial memory capacities of epileptic patients with memory complaints, a navigation task was proposed as part of the neuropsychological assessment. This task corresponds to learning a route within the hospital. It is composed of a learning phase and then the patient is asked to repeat the route one hour later and then six weeks later, in order to check for the presence or absence of long-term forgetting. We wanted to study the results of patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) by comparing them to a group of healthy volunteers matched in age and gender in order to check whether there is significant long-term forgetting and whether there is a significant difference between Right TLE and Left TLE. This study therefore aims to statistically analyze the effects of these two groups: epileptic patients and healthy volunteers, but also to combine the effect of the laterality of epilepsy specifically on spatial memory performance. It will also be interesting to observe whether there is a difference between men and women in the healthy volunteer group for spatial memory learning.

Conditions

• Epilepsy Lobe Temporal
• Healthy
• Epilepsy

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
DIAGNOSTIC_TEST	spatial memory test	The assessment of spatial memory corresponds in our study to a navigation task, i.e. learning a route through the hospital. The route encoding phase is first carried out. The participant follows the experimenter, with the instruction to pay close attention to the route in order to be able to do it again alone. For directions, it is said "this way" or "that way" and not "left" or "right". The route includes 18 intersections. The participant immediately does the route again alone. The number of correct answers (BR), i.e. correct directions taken at each intersection, is counted as well as the time to complete the route (TR). Direction errors are corrected. This is recall 1. The participant is then asked to do the route a second time. The correct answers and the times to complete the route are recorded. Errors are corrected (feedback). This is recall 2. If the participant makes a mistake on recall 1 or 2, a third attempt is made. This is recall 3. After an interval of 1 hour, the partic

Timeline

• Start date: 2025-02-26
• Primary completion: 2025-11-12
• Completion: 2025-11-12
• First posted: 2025-02-26
• Last updated: 2025-09-22

Locations

1 site across 1 country: France