Early childhood trauma and hippocampal volumes in patients with epileptic and psychogenic seizures

B Johnstone; D Velakoulis; CY Yuan; A Ang; C Steward; P Desmond; TJ O'Brien

Journal article

Early childhood trauma and hippocampal volumes in patients with epileptic and psychogenic seizures

B Johnstone, D Velakoulis, CY Yuan, A Ang, C Steward, P Desmond, TJ O'Brien

Epilepsy and Behavior | ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE | Published : 2016

DOI: 10.1016/j.yebeh.2016.09.015

Abstract

Objective Exposure to early life childhood trauma has been implicated as resulting in a vulnerability to epileptic and psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES), hippocampal atrophy, and psychiatric disorders. This study aimed to explore the relationships between childhood trauma, epilepsy, PNES, and hippocampal volume in patients admitted to a video-electroencephalogram monitoring (VEM) unit. Methods One hundred thirty-one patients were recruited from the Royal Melbourne Hospital VEM unit. The diagnostic breakdown of this group was: temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) (32), other epilepsy syndromes (35), PNES (47), other nonepileptic syndromes (5), both epilepsy and PNES (6), and uncertain diagnosi..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Dennis Velakoulis Author

Chris Steward Author

Patricia Desmond Author

Nigel Jones Author

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Stress and epilepsy

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Grants

Awarded by Royal Melbourne Hospital Neuroscience Foundation

Funding Acknowledgements

The study was funded by grants to Terence J. O'Brien from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) (grant number 566843) and from the Royal Melbourne Hospital Neuroscience Foundation. The remaining authors have no conflicts of interest.