• Gavin J B Elias, Jürgen Germann, Clemens Neudorfer, Andrew A Namasivayam, Aaron Loh, Robert M Gramer, George M Ibrahim, Taufik Valiante, Jennifer C Tomaszczyk, Mary Pat McAndrews, Walter Kucharczyk, Alexandre Boutet, and Andres M Lozano.
• Division of Neurosurgery, Toronto Western Hospital, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
• World Neurosurg. 2021 Aug 1; 152: e652-e665.

ObjectiveSurgical resection can decrease seizure frequency in medically intractable temporal lobe epilepsy. However, the functional and structural consequences of this intervention on brain circuitry are poorly understood. We investigated structural changes that occur in brain circuits after mesial temporal lobe resection for refractory epilepsy. Specifically, we used neuroimaging techniques to evaluate changes in 1) contralesional hippocampal and bilateral mammillary body volume and 2) brain-wide cortical thickness.MethodsSerial T1-weighted brain magnetic resonance images were acquired before and after surgery (1.6 ± 0.5 year interval) in 21 patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (9 women, 12 men; mean age, 39.4 ± 11.5 years) who had undergone unilateral temporal lobe resection (14 anterior temporal lobectomy; 7 selective amygdalohippocampectomy). Blinded manual segmentation of the unresected hippocampal formation and bilateral mammillary bodies was performed using the Pruessner and Copenhaver protocols, respectively. Brain-wide cortical thickness estimates were computed using the CIVET pipeline.ResultsSurgical resection was associated with a 5% reduction in contralesional hippocampal volume (P < 0.01) and a 9.5% reduction in mammillary body volume (P = 0.03). In addition, significant changes in cortical thickness were observed in contralesional anterior and middle cingulate gyrus and insula (Pfalse discovery rate < 0.01) as well as in other temporal, frontal, and occipital regions (Pfalse discovery rate < 0.05). Postoperative verbal memory function was significantly associated with cortical thickness change in contralesional inferior temporal gyrus (R2 = 0.39; P = 0.03).ConclusionsThese results indicate that mesial temporal lobe resection is associated with both volume loss in spared Papez circuitry and changes in cortical thickness across the brain.Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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