Kathryn King / Psychology / Faculty Mentor: Crystal Cooper
Epilepsy and psychiatric comorbidities have a bidirectional relationship, suggesting shared underlying brain dysfunction. Anxiety and depression have been characterized by emotion regulation deficits, yet these processes have not been investigated in epilepsy, nor have electrophysiological methods been utilized. Here, we examine the spatiotemporal profile of emotional conflict processing in 28 adolescents with epilepsy and 25 controls (aged 10-20y) using magnetoencephalography. While controls exhibited normative behavioral patterns, responding slower and less accurately to conflicting stimuli, adolescents with epilepsy responded similarly across conditions. Relative to controls, adolescents with epilepsy showed decreased brain activity to emotional conflict in key regions related to error evaluation and learning around the average response time (500-700 ms), and regions involved in decision making during post-response monitoring (800-1000 ms). Because psychiatric symptom severity varied between epilepsy subgroups (focal, generalized), brain activity was regressed with depression and anxiety for each subgroup separately. Analyses revealed that activity in error evaluation regions (500-600 ms) predicted anxiety and depression in focal epilepsy, while regions related to learning (600-700 ms) predicted anxiety in generalized epilepsy. These findings reveal both shared and differential dysfunction in epilepsy and its psychiatric comorbidities, which could be targets for future research and treatment.
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