Recent developments in cognitive fMRI for temporal lobe epilepsy

Epilepsy is frequently accompanied by severe cognitive side effects. Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), and even successful surgical treatment, may affect cognitive function, in particular language as well as verbal and visual memory function. Epilepsy arising from the temporal lobe can be controlled surgically in up to 70% of patients. The goals of epilepsy surgery are to remove the brain areas generating the seizures without causing or aggravating neuropsychological deficits. This requires accurate localization of the brain areas generating the seizures (“epileptogenic zone”) and the areas responsible for motor and cognitive functions, such as language and memory (“essential brain regions”) during presurgical evaluation. In the past decades, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been increasingly used to noninvasively lateralize and localize not only primary motor and somatosensory areas, but also brain areas that are involved in everyday language and memory processes. The imaging modality also shows potential for predicting the effects of temporal lobe resection on language and memory function. Together with other MRI modalities, cognitive fMRI is a promising tool to improve surgical strategies tailored to individual patients with regard to functional outcome, by virtue of definition of epileptic cerebral areas that need to be resected and eloquent areas that need to be spared.The aim of this review is to provide an overview of recent developments and practical recommendations for the clinical use of cognitive fMRI in TLE.