Schedule of Events | Search Abstracts | Invited Symposia | Symposia | Poster Sessions | Data Blitz

When Control Loses Control: Disordered Activation of Frontoparietal Networks in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

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

Tamer Gezici^1,3,4, Ilknur Yaren Pala^1,3,4, Berfin Gürcan^1,3,4, Zaur Guliyev², Aslı Akyol Gürses², Burak Karaaslan², İrem Yıldırım², Tuğba Hırfanoğlu², Ausaf Ahmed Farooqui^1,3,4; ¹Bilkent University, Ankara Türkiye, ²Gazi University Faculty of Medicine, Ankara Türkiye, ³Aysel Sabuncu Brain Research Center, Ankara Türkiye, ⁴National Magnetic Resonance Research Center, Ankara Türkiye

Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) is among the most common forms of epilepsy. Although lesions are typically confined to the medial temporal lobe, cognitive control deficits are a consistent feature. Previous studies have shown reduced activation of cognitive control regions in TLE patients, yet it remains unclear whether this reflects the disease’s etiopathogenesis or the suppressive effects of antiepileptic medications that reduce neural firing. We investigated whether the diminished activation observed in TLE extends across all brain regions or is functionally selective. TLE patients and healthy controls performed two tasks: a visual working memory (WM) updating task and a language task in which participants completed sentences by generating the missing word. Analyses focused on well-characterized networks—frontoparietal regions associated with cognitive control and frontotemporal regions linked to language. These networks are functionally distinct: frontoparietal regions typically activate under control demands but not during language processing, and vice versa for language regions. As expected, controls showed strong frontoparietal activation during the difficult WM task. This activation was markedly reduced in TLE patients. In contrast, language-region responses during sentence completion were preserved. Strikingly, in TLE patients, frontoparietal regions that failed to activate during WM exhibited abnormally elevated activation during the language task—a pattern absent in controls. These results suggest that TLE is not characterized by a general hypoactivation of cognitive control regions but by disordered activation: regions that should engage during control tasks fail to do so, yet aberrantly activate during tasks where they should remain inactive.

Topic Area: EXECUTIVE PROCESSES: Other