Neurometric evaluation of epileptic children who do well and poorly in school

Abstract The neurometric examination is a way of obtaining quantitative electrophysiological data which can be analyzed statistically and compared with similar information from control groups. Statistically significant differences were found among 4 groups of children: group I — ‘epileptic achievers’, children with a history of seizures who are functioning at grade level, group II — ‘epileptic underachievers’, children with a history of seizures who are not functioning up to grade level, group III — ‘healthy achievers’, children without a history of seizures who are functioning at grade level, and group IV — ‘healthy underachievers’, children who do not have a history of seizures and who are not functioning at grade level. ‘Epileptic achievers’ and ‘epileptic underachievers' both showed sharp waves, severe and widespread. However, ‘epileptic underachievers’ displayed more ‘beta bursts’, excessive theta and beta activity in the resting EEG, and greater hyper-reactivity of evoked resposes to visual and auditory stimuli in the frontal and frontopolar regions. ‘Epileptic achievers’ and ‘healthy achievers’ both had little abnormality in the frequency spectrum. However, the ‘epileptic achievers’ showed more theta activity, more asymmetry and lower coherence. ‘Epileptic underachievers’ showed a lower incidence of EEG asymmetries than ‘healthy underachievers’ but more theta and beta activity. ‘Healthy underachievers’ showed more abnormal spectral bands, more areas with abnormal spectral bands, greater asymmetry, lower coherence, and a higher incidence of sharp waves than ‘healthy achievers’ When the ‘epileptic achievers’ and ‘underachievers’ were combined, they were found to have a significantly higher incidence of sharp waves, theta and beta excess, EEG asymmetry, low coherence, and hyper-reactive evoked responses than the ‘healthy achievers’.