[Learning disabilities in epileptic children]

To analyse the association between neuropsychological disorders and epilepsy in infancy by searching for the origin in the pathophysiology of epilepsy as a neurological disease and based on the adaptive plasticity of the brain.

The existence of electrical discharges, both in the presence and the absence of clinical seizures, is linked to problems involving attention, recent memory, limitations in the linguistic, visuospatial and executive capabilities, with slowed psychomotor functioning, and this leads to learning difficulties. The early age of onset of epilepsy, the secondary causation, the fact it is refractory to treatment and therefore requires polytherapy, and the negative experience of the disease all have an effect on the association of neuropsychological disorders. The type of epilepsy that can determine the involvement of specific functions, such as memory, is affected in partial epilepsies of the temporal lobe and in generalised epilepsies attention is affected.

Epileptic seizures are not the only manifestation of epilepsy, and children display associated symptoms that make it necessary to carry out a comprehensive neuropsychological evaluation that must include hemisphere-specific examinations of the brain functions.