Visual Motor and Executive Functioning in Adult Patients with Primary Generalized Epilepsy: A Pilot Study.

Background and purpose: Epilepsy is a neuropsychological disorder which can lead to various cognitive deficits of varying levels. Primary generalized epilepsy is characterized by bilateral ictal electroencephalography patterns and excessive neural activity found in both hemispheres of the brain. There is dearth of research on primary generalized epilepsy in adult population. The present study investigates the visual motor and executive functioning deficits in patients with primary generalized epilepsy.

Methods: Study was conducted on 30 participants (n=30) divided into target and normal control group. Target group consisted of patients diagnosed with primary generalized epilepsy with minimum 5 years of illness. Bender-Gestalt test (BGT) and Wisconsin's Card Sorting Test (WCST) was administered on both the groups.

Results: A significant difference was found between target group and control group's performances on BGT which indicates that visual motor functioning of control group was better than target group. A significant difference in executive functioning was found in performance of epilepsy patients and non-patients on the domains of WCST.

Conclusions: Both executive and visuomotor functioning are significantly affected in patients of primary generalized epilepsy in adult patients.