Epilepsy is both a disease of the brain and the mind. Here, we present the first of two papers with extended summaries of selected presentations of the Third International Congress on Epilepsy, Brain and Mind (April 3-5, 2014; Brno, Czech Republic). Epilepsy in history and the arts and its relationships with religion were discussed, as were overviews of epilepsy and relevant aspects of social cognition, handedness, accelerated forgetting and autobiographical amnesia, and large-scale brain networks.

• Keywords
• Accelerated forgetting, Cognition, Epilepsy, Handedness, Music, Networks, Religion, Social cognition,
• MeSH
• Amnesia diagnosis   psychology   therapy   MeSH
• Epilepsy diagnosis   psychology   therapy   MeSH
• Functional Laterality MeSH
• Internationality * MeSH
• Congresses as Topic * trends   MeSH
• Humans MeSH
• Mind-Body Relations, Metaphysical * MeSH
• Brain pathology   MeSH
• Social Behavior MeSH
• Check Tag
• Humans MeSH
• Publication type
• Journal Article MeSH
• Review MeSH
• Geographicals
• Czech Republic MeSH

Several functional MR imaging studies evaluating the lateralisation of linguistic functions in patients who underwent Wada testing have been reported. There is extensive variance in the Laterality index (LI) calculation across the studies, and the optimal calculation method remains unclear. We attempted to calculate the LI in different ways in the same subjects, in order to find the LI calculation method with the highest correlation to the Wada test. Fifteen patients (10 females, 5 males) suffering from medically intractable temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) (12 left, 3 right) were admitted for the study. The patients underwent a standardized bilateral intracarotid short-acting barbiturate test. Language testing included spontaneous speech, oral comprehension, reading, object and picture naming, and repetition. All the tasks were scored separately in order to increase the possibility of correlation between Wada and LI. A silent phonemic verbal fluency task (VFT) was used as a language paradigm for functional measurement. Regions of interest (ROIs), with a known association with language function (Broca's area, the lateral prefrontal cortex, etc.), were defined. First, the LIs were calculated from the ROIs using a previously reported method (simple suprathreshold count). Next, we used several new methods of LI calculation (t-weighting of voxels, methods independent of the choice of the statistical threshold, etc.) The most significant correlation with Wada was proven in the LIs that were evaluated from Broca's area (up to R = 0.94, P = 1 x 10(-7)). However, the new LI calculation methods used in the present study did not produce a statistically significant benefit in comparison to previously reported methods.

• MeSH
• Amobarbital MeSH
• Frontal Lobe anatomy & histology   physiology   MeSH
• Reading MeSH
• Adult MeSH
• Epilepsy, Temporal Lobe diagnosis   physiopathology   MeSH
• Functional Laterality physiology   MeSH
• Hypnotics and Sedatives MeSH
• Language * MeSH
• Language Tests MeSH
• Humans MeSH
• Magnetic Resonance Imaging methods   MeSH
• Brain Mapping methods   MeSH
• Cerebral Cortex anatomy & histology   physiology   MeSH
• Nerve Net anatomy & histology   physiology   MeSH
• Neuropsychological Tests MeSH
• Speech Perception physiology   MeSH
• Predictive Value of Tests MeSH
• Speech physiology   MeSH
• Verbal Behavior physiology   MeSH
• Check Tag
• Adult MeSH
• Humans MeSH
• Male MeSH
• Female MeSH
• Publication type
• Journal Article MeSH
• Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't MeSH
• Names of Substances
• Amobarbital MeSH
• Hypnotics and Sedatives MeSH