An fMRI case study of visual memory in a patient with epilepsy: comparison before and after temporal lobe surgery

We report fMRI activation data for a female patient with epilepsy, who was tested before and 2 years after resection surgery, to assess changes in fMRI activation. Areas within her right ATL/MTL were removed during surgery, including the right hippocampus. A visuo-spatial task was used in which novel and familiar pictures of objects, animals, scenes and buildings were randomly presented. Half of the pictures were novel to the patient, while half of the pictures were familiar pictures from the same stimulus categories. Despite unchanged visuo-spatial IQ-scores and equal performance on the fMRI task pre- and post-surgery, there was evidence of changes in functional organization of the brain as seen in the pre- versus post-surgery fMRI data. It is suggested that maintenance of memory performance from pre- to post-surgery might be due to functional reorganization in the brain, as evidenced in the fMRI data.