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To investigate whether a motor attempt EEG paradigm coupled with functional electrical stimulation can detect command following and, therefore, signs of conscious awareness in patients with disorders of consciousness, we recorded nine patients admitted to acute rehabilitation after a brain lesion. We extracted peak classification accuracy and peak session discriminant power (PSDP) and we assessed their correlation to the established coma recovery scale revised (CRS-R) and the agreement with diagnosis based on the novel motor behavior tool (MBT). Only PSDP correlated significantly with CRS-R and it also outperformed peak accuracy regarding the MBT. We conclude that PSDP might be more suitable than accuracy to complement CRS-R and MBT in evaluating ambiguous cases and in detecting cognitive motor dissociation.

Peri-insular hemispherotomy is a disconnective procedure that enables functional isolation of single or multiple epileptogenic regions largely involving one hemisphere. This report is based on a consecutive series of 13 pediatric patients affected by refractory hemispheric epilepsy studied and operated on at the Neurological Institute "C. Besta" of Milan. In all patients seizures were focal with polymorphic features and daily frequency. Preoperative electro-clinical and MRI data were suggestive of Rasmussen's encephalitis in 6 cases, hemimegalencephaly in 2, hemispheric cortical malformation in 3, perinatal stroke in 2 cases. Mean age at surgery was 7.3 years. The postoperative course was good for all patients. Mean follow-up period was 4.5 years (range 2-7 years). After hemispherotomy, 8 patients were Engel Class I and five continued to have seizures and were classified as Engel Class II (1 case) III (3 cases) or IV (1 case). The outcome results varied according to the etiology; the best results were achieved in patients with Rasmussen encephalitis and perinatal vascular strokes with 75% classified in Engel Class I. Three patients underwent a second surgery because of persistent seizures and evidence of incomplete disconnection; two out of three patients had hemimegalencephaly, and did not improve; the third patient with perinatal stroke resulted seizure free. We conclude that hemispherotomy can be performed successfully to treat medically intractable hemispheric epilepsy, providing remarkable results in terms of seizure outcome and quality of life.

Atypical patterns of language activation in functional MRI (fMRI) are not unusual, particularly in patients with severe epilepsy. Still, the functional significance of these activations is under debate. We describe a case of a right-handed patient affected by drug-refractory right temporal lobe epilepsy in whom pre-surgical fMRI showed bilateral language activations, greater in the right hemisphere (RH). After surgery, a right subdural hematoma caused epileptic status and severe aphasia. This post-surgical complication of a crossed aphasia confirmed the prior fMRI findings of RH language thus stressing the value of pre-surgical fMRI evaluations, even when surgery is planned in the RH of a right-handed patient.