Augmentation of cognitive function in epilepsy

Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological disorders in humans afflicting more than 1% of the population and 65 million people worldwide (England et al., 2012). The most common form of acquired epilepsy is temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), and over 30% of patients with TLE have seizures that are refractory to commonly used anticonvulsant drugs (Bauer and Burr, 2001). Mesial temporal lobe sclerosis (MTS) is the most common pathological abnormality in TLE (Bronen et al., 1997). The histopathological hallmarks of hippocampal sclerosis include segmental loss of pyramidal neurons, granule cell dispersion, and reactive gliosis (Sutula et al., 1989). Indeed, changes in the integrity of hippocampus and surrounding hippocampal white matter is postulated to influence overall temporal lobe network connectivity, hippocampus efficiency, seizures (Cadotte et al., 2009), and memory function (Eichenbaum et al., 2007, 2012). Indeed, animal and human studies show that abnormalities in the hippocampus and its white matter inputs and outputs are correlated with the severity of memory dysfunction (Christidi et al., 2011).