Altered Effective Connectivity of the Attentional Network in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy with EEG Data

Existing studies have shown that the attentional function of epilepsy is prone to be impaired. However, the characterization of brain connectivity behind this impairment remains uncertain. This study investigates attention-related brain connectivity in 92 patients with temporal lobe epilepsy and 78 healthy controls using a 32-channel EEG monitor during an attention network test. Compared to controls, patients showed reduced temporal-occipital connectivity in the alerting and orienting networks, but increased frontal-occipital connectivity in the executive network. Additionally, this study showed that patients and healthy individuals exhibited similar network topologies in the alerting and orienting networks, but the executive networks in patients showed altered topology properties, with a larger clustering coefficient in the theta band and a longer characteristic path length in the delta and theta bands. These findings reveal distinct characteristics of attention network connectivity in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy, offering valuable insights into the underlying mechanisms of epilepsy and providing clinical guidance for long-term monitoring and intervention.