Voxel Based Morphometry and Manual Volumetric Analysis of the Cingulate Gyrus in Patients with Juvenile Myoclonic Epilepsy and Frontal Lobe Epilepsy Compared to Normal Controls

L. Vu, B. Swartz, K. Head, M. Mandelkern, O. Nalcioglu, M-Y. Su Tu & Yuen Center for Functional Onco Imaging, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, United States, Epilepsy Center, Hoag Hospital, Newport Beach, CA, United States, Department of Physics, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, United States Purpose It has been known that patients with Juvenile Myoclonic Epilepsy (JME) and Frontal Lobe Epilepsy (FLE) subjects have deficits in working memory [1]. High resolution MRI has found increasing number of neuronal dysplastic regions in the so-called “cryptogenic” (unknown) origin group in FLE subjects. The subjects with FLE show neuro-cognitive deficits in the frontal domain, whether or not a clear structural lesion is seen, leading to the hypothesis that it is the seizures, not the structure abnormalities that cause the cognitive dysfunction. Many neuroimaging studies have been performed for JME, and the findings include a lack of increased prefrontal glucose uptake during an activation paradigm [2], increased grey matter in the medial frontal region [3], possible decreased NAA in the cingulate [4], increased myoinositol in the prefrontal cortex [1], and abnormal texture of the thalamus [5]. Fewer studies were available for FLE. In this study we compared the brain morphology in patients with FLE to patients with JME and normal age-matched controls. The manual volumetric analysis was performed to measure the volume of cingulate gyrus, also the voxel-based morphometry (VBM) analysis was performed to assess the differences across the whole brain.