Research Projects

Central auditory processing disorder (CAP) affects various auditory skills, including discrimination and temporal processing. Epilepsy can cause deficits in CAP, and researchers have reported CAPD in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). Mismatch negativity (MMN) is an electrophysiological measure that can affect MMN. This study aims to study pre-attentive auditory processing using MMN in patients with refractory unilateral medial temporal lobe epilepsy with medial temporal lobe hippocampal sclerosis (MTEHS) and compare it with age-gender matched healthy controls. The National Institute of Mental Health & Neurosciences (NIMHANS) will conduct the study, involving patients with refractory right medial temporal lobe epilepsy with hippocampal sclerosis MTEHS and left MTEHS, as well as age/gender-matched healthy controls. The study will investigate the effects of medial temporal lobe sclerosis (MTLE) on patients with epilepsies, other medial temporal lobe lesion types, and those who have undergone epilepsy surgery. The study will involve simultaneous electroencephalography (EEG), magnetoencephalography (MEG), and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for co-registration. Patients with a confirmed diagnosis of MTEHS and awaiting surgical intervention will be recruited, and the clinical diagnosis will be determined by neurologists. Subjective CAPD tests will be performed later to gain insight into auditory processing abilities. The study will have a time schedule with milestones, including the establishment of the test protocol, recruitment of junior research fellows, data collection, analysis of data, report writing, and suggested plan of action for utilizing the research outcome.