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Neurocognitive functioning in patients with glioma of the left and right temporal lobes

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Abstract

Patients with glioma frequently suffer from deficits of neurocognitive functioning (NCF), though few studies have assessed NCF in localized glioma patients prior to surgery. One hundred and three patients (M age = 52.0; M education = 14.6 years) with histologically confirmed glioma in the right (RTL: n = 30; 57 % glioblastoma) or left temporal lobe (LTL: n = 73; 49 % glioblastoma) completed presurgical neuropsychological assessment. Impairment of NCF was identified in 75 % of all patients. Notably, patients with RTL glioma were most frequently impaired on measures of verbal memory and executive functioning, and at similar rates as the LTL group. Nonetheless, χ2 tests revealed that impairment rates were significantly higher in the LTL group on attention and object naming tests (p ≤ .05). Independent-samples t-tests revealed that mean performances of patients with LTL glioma were also significantly below RTL patients on measures of attention (p = .01), verbal learning and memory (p = .05), and language (p < .03). A trend was observed in which anterior LTL tumors were associated with reduced verbal learning and medial LTL lesions with delayed recall problems, though patients with lesions involving multiple LTL regions exhibited the greatest difficulty across all verbal memory measures. Significant group differences in NCF performances remained so after controlling for FLAIR volume and tumor histology. These findings indicate that temporal lobe glioma frequently present with impaired NCF, though impairments are often milder in RTL compared to LTL patients. Nonetheless, the relatively frequent verbal memory impairment in the RTL group underscores the bilaterality of verbal memory processes.

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Acknowledgments

Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute of Nursing Research of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R01NR014195 (J.S.Wefel). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neuro-Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, 1515 Holcombe Boulevard Unit 431, Houston, TX, 77030, USA

    Kyle R. Noll & Jeffrey S. Wefel

  2. Brain and Spine Institute, Seton Hospital, Austin, TX, USA

    Mateo Ziu

  3. Department of Neurosurgery, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA

    Jeffrey S. Weinberg

Authors
  1. Kyle R. Noll
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  2. Mateo Ziu
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  3. Jeffrey S. Weinberg
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  4. Jeffrey S. Wefel
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Correspondence to Kyle R. Noll.

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The authors report no conflict of interest concerning the materials or methods used in this study or the findings specified in this paper.

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Noll, K.R., Ziu, M., Weinberg, J.S. et al. Neurocognitive functioning in patients with glioma of the left and right temporal lobes. J Neurooncol 128, 323–331 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11060-016-2114-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11060-016-2114-0

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