Cognitive-Behavioral Consequences of Epilepsy

Abstract

Children who have epilepsy (two or more unprovoked seizures) are at risk of experiencing cognitive and behavioral consequences related to: 1) the underlying brain dysfunction that resulted in the seizures, 2) the side effects of anticonvulsant drugs, and 3) psychosocial problems in the family, including the vulnerable child syndrome.

Although certain epilepsy syndromes, such as infantile spasms, are associated with mental retardation or progressive intellectual decline, others typically are associated with normal development. Children who have "absence" attacks, juvenile myoclonic epilepsy, and benign Rolandic seizures, for example, generally are not impaired cognitively. When children are intellectually normal prior to the onset of epilepsy, intellectual decline is rare regardless of the number of seizures.