Symposia 12 Program Schedule
02/16/2024
01:45 pm - 03:15 pm
Room: West Side Ballroom - Salon 3
Symposia 12: Beyond Assessment: Integrating Rehabilitation Models into the Neuropsychology of Epilepsy Across the Lifespan and Around the Globe
Simposium #1
Neuropsychology moving to Controlling the Comorbidities of Epilepsy
Bruce Hermann, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, Madison, United States
Category: Epilepsy/Seizures
Keyword 1: cognitive functioning
Keyword 2: mood disorders
Objective:
The child and adult epilepsies can be associated with significant neurobehavioral comorbidities impacting quality of life and everyday function. These comorbidities include cognitive, academic, psychological, and social issues. The treatment and control of seizures have historically been a priority for treating clinicians, patients, and families. Neurobehavioral research has focused primarily on characterizing the nature, predictors, course, and impact of cognitive and behavioral complications of epilepsy, with less focus on the development of interventions to treat or even prevent these comorbidities.
Participants and Methods:
A comprehensive review of the literature was conducted to examine trends and research efforts investigating the cognitive and behavioral complications of epilepsy and rehabilitation models of care.
Results:
More recently, the importance of diagnosing and treating comorbidities has been recognized by the epilepsy community and has become a research priority across several organizations (e.g., NINDS, AES, CDC). Their efforts offer to encourage the role of the neuropsychologist in epilepsy care to not be limited solely to the evaluation of cognitive and behavioral function but to move to a more holistic role that includes the provision of nonpharmacological interventions, counseling, and cognitive rehabilitation or prehabilitation.
Conclusions:
This presentation will overview these trends and research efforts investigating the cognitive and behavioral complications of epilepsy and initiatives aimed at developing novel interventions and models of care that target the prevention and treatment of epilepsy-related comorbidities.
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