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Widespread Network Functional Changes Including Sensory Cortices in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

Poster Session B - Sunday, March 8, 2026, 8:00 – 10:00 am PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

İlknur Yaren Pala^1,2,5 (), Tamer Gezici^1,5, Berfin Gürcan^1,5, Zaur Guliyev³, Aslı Akyol Gürses³, Burak Karaaslan³, İrem Yıldırım³, Tuğba Hırfanoğlu³, Ausaf Ahmed Farooqui^1,4,5; ¹Bilkent University, Ankara, Türkiye, ²Ankara Hacı Bayram Veli University, Ankara, Türkiye, ³Gazi University, Ankara, Türkiye, ⁴National Magnetic Resonance Research Center, Ankara, Türkiye, ⁵Aysel Sabuncu Brain Research Center, Ankara, Türkiye

Temporal lobe epilepsies (TLE) are amongst the commonest types of epilepsies. While the lesions are typically in the medial temporal lobe, patients present with a range of neuropsychological deficits. Existing studies have characterized poor activations of cognitive control regions and poor deactivations in the default mode regions as well as changes in functional connectivity across these regions, and have suggested that TLE is characterized by widespread neural dysfunction that is not limited to medial temporal lobe regions. We found that changes in these patients are not limited to these networks and even include sensory cortices. While these regions do not present with perceptual problems, the behavior of their sensory cortices was markedly different from that in healthy controls. These regions did not activate in task situations that normally activate them and did not deactivate in situations that normally deactivate them, resulting in overall less differentiated responses. Visual regions in TLE patients showed poor activation of visual regions in visual working memory tasks compared to those in controls. However, these same visual regions in TLE patients showed greater activation in response to language tasks, a phenomenon not observed in controls. Auditory and right somatomotor regions, which are not involved in the ongoing visual working memory task since responses are made using the right hand, were deactivated in control subjects but not in TLE patients. Lastly, while sensory regions in the control group did not show higher activation in response to language processing demands, those in TLE patients did.

Topic Area: EXECUTIVE PROCESSES: Other