Recovery of cortical atrophy in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy after successful anterior temporal lobectomy.

Abstract The aims of this study were to investigate whether the cortical atrophy caused by temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) was reversible after successful anterior temporal lobectomy (ATL) and to further observe whether possible changes are related to age at surgery and cognitive changes. Twelve patients with unilateral mesial TLE who received ATL and remained seizure free in one year follow-up were included. They underwent two MRI scans few days before and oneyear after surgery. Thirty age- and sex-matched healthy participants were recruited as controls. Group comparisons were used to test the differences in cortical thickness (CTh) between the pre-/postsurgical patients and controls. Longitudinal test was used to directly show postsurgical changes of the patients. Besides, the correlations between regional cortical volume (CVo) changes and age at surgery or cognitive changes were also tested. Compared with controls, the patients with TLE showed dispersed cortical thinning especially in the bilateral frontal lobes before surgery and no significant cortical thinning except for cortices near the resected areas after surgery. The longitudinal analysis showed CTh increment in the ipsilateral precentral and postcentral gyrus, cuneus and widespread in the contralateral cortex. In the volumetric analysis, the CVo changes in the contralateral hemisphere were negatively correlated with age at surgery and positively correlated with MoCA score changes. This study suggests that the cortical atrophy caused by TLE could recover after successful ATL. The recovery ability is greater in younger subjects and is positively related to cognitive recovery. These findings could serve as new clues that patients with TLE can benefit from timely and successful ATL.