Research

The Leslie Munzer Neurological Institute of Long Island has received $70,000 from an anonymous donor to study the nature of depression in epilepsy and attempt to elucidate the relationship between these two disorders through the use of highly advanced analysis of structural imaging techniques.

Symptoms of depression are among the most common of the interictal psychiatric co-morbidities in patients with epilepsy. Depression has been noted in about 1/3 of community based epilepsy population and even up to 60% in tertiary epilepsy center populations. Depressive features in patients with epilepsy may have distinctive features. These features often consist of labile depressive symptoms (depressive mood, anergia, pain, insomnia), labile affective symptoms (fear, anxiety), as well as irritability and even euphoric moods. This is especially true for patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). Whether these depressive features are unique to epilepsy or are part of the spectrum of major depression remains an unresolved question in the literature. Additionally, while it has long been known that patients with epilepsy have a higher risk of depression, more recent findings indicate that a history of depression may predispose someone to developing epilepsy. However, the hypothesized common pathologic mechanism underlying this bi-directional relationship has yet to be fully elucidated.