Cognitive development in epilepsy. The relative influence of epileptic activity and of brain damage.

A total of 37 children, aged between 12 and 18 years and resident in an epileptic colony, were assessed in several ways for the frequency of their epileptic discharging activity and for the extent of underlying brain pathology. In addition, the children were evaluated for their level of performance on various tests of cognitive and visuo-motor functions. The influence on test performance of the discharging activity and of the extent of pathology was then compared, taking other factors such as age at onset of the seizures, duration of the epileptic illness and level of medication into account as far as possible. Only two factors, namely certain indices of discharging activity and level of medication, were found to have significantly influenced particular aspects of cognitive performance; it was impossible to document an influence of brain pathology statistically.