Obsessive-compulsive symptoms in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy
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Updated: Aug 23, 2026

Protocol for Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation with Symptom Provocation to Treat Obsessive-compulsive Disorder
Published on: November 25, 2025
Keren L Isaacs1, John W Philbeck, William B Barr
1Department of Psychology, The George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052, USA. keren.isaacs@med.nyu.edu
Abstract:
The goals of this work were to: (1) determine the prevalence of clinically significant obsessive-compulsive (OC) symptoms in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), (2) characterize the differences in self-reported OC symptoms in patients with TLE and a normative control group, and (3) compare the severity of OC symptoms in right and left hemisphere TLE patients. Patients with TLE (n=30) were administered the Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory (OCI). As a group, patients with TLE had a higher prevalence of OC symptoms than the nonpatient normative sample. In addition, TLE patients exhibited elevated scores on all but 3 of the 16 OCI scales and subscales. There were no reliable differences in OC symptoms in patients with right versus left hemisphere seizure foci, although the right hemisphere patients tended to score higher on both scales of the OCI.
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