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Updated: Aug 30, 2026
A Multimodal Imaging- and Stimulation-based Method of Evaluating Connectivity-related Brain Excitability in Patients with Epilepsy
Published on: November 13, 2016
Thalamic dysfunction in juvenile myoclonic epilepsy: a proton MRS study
Susana B Mory1, Li M Li, Carlos A M Guerreiro
1Department of Neurology, University of Campinas-UNICAMP, Campinas, SP, Brazil.
Purpose:
To investigate neuronal dysfunction in the thalami of patients with juvenile myoclonic epilepsy (JME) by using proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS).
Methods:
We performed single-voxel proton MRS over the right and the left thalami of 10 consecutive patients (five women) with JME (mean age, 31.6 years) and 10 age-matched healthy volunteers (five men). All patients had seizure onset in late childhood-teenage, normal neurologic examination, typical EEG of JME, and normal high-resolution MR imaging (MRI). We determined ratios of N-acetylaspartate (NAA) over creatine-phosphocreatine (Cr). Values <2 standard deviations from controls were considered abnormal. We performed analysis of variance to evaluate group differences.
Results:
Group analysis showed that thalami NAA/Cr ratios were significantly decreased in JME patients (left side, 1.58 +/- 0.26; right side, 1.5 +/- 0.15) as compared with controls (left side, 1.98 +/- 0.18; right side, 1.88 +/- 0.15; p = 0.001 and p = 0.007, respectively). Individual analysis showed that nine of the 10 patients had abnormal NAA/Cr in at least one of the thalami.
Conclusions:
This study shows evidence of neuronal dysfunction in the thalami of patients with JME, which may have relevance for the mechanisms of seizure generation in this form of generalized epilepsy.
