Journal of clinical neuroscience : official journal of the Neurosurgical Society of Australasia
September 17, 2026 · via Europe PMC
Correlating lesion localization within the functional cortical networks in sleep related epilepsy caused by focal cortical dysplasia type II.
Hu J, Wu W, Li H, +6 more, Aung T.
AI summary — for doctors, generated from the abstract only
Among patients with focal cortical dysplasia type II, smaller lesions and absence of an aura were independently linked to sleep-related epilepsy, while lesions in the dorsal attention network were linked to non-sleep-related epilepsy.
What was studied
Retrospective comparison of 108 patients with histologically proven FCD type II (55 sleep-related epilepsy, 53 not), looking at lesion size, location, functional network placement and subcortical volume/shape including thalamic nuclei.
Key findings
- Smaller lesion size (p=0.035) and no aura (p=0.041) were independently associated with sleep-related epilepsy
- FCD within the dorsal attention network was associated with non-sleep-related epilepsy (p=0.048)
- Thalamus and thalamic nuclei volumes did not differ between groups
- No regional subcortical shape differences were found
Clinical relevance
Knowing which lesion features go with sleep-related seizures may help characterise FCD type II phenotypes and guide localisation work in epilepsy surgery evaluation.
Who should care
Limitations
Single-design retrospective study with modest sample size and borderline p-values that were not described as corrected for multiple comparisons.
Consider lesion size, aura history and network location when characterising sleep-related seizures in FCD type II, but treat these as hypothesis-generating associations.
This is an AI-generated summary of the published abstract, not a clinical recommendation. It may not reflect the full text or subsequent updates — verify against the original source before acting on it.
Abstract
Background
To investigate whether the co-localization of focal cortical dysplasia (FCD) type II within the distributed cortical networks and the presence of alteration in the subcortical structures were associated with sleep related epilepsy (SRE) in patients with FCD type II.
Methods
Epileptic patients with histologically proven FCD type II between March 2012 and June 2023 were enrolled. FCD volumes, anatomical locations, and functional network locations were determined. Voxel-based volumetric and vertex-wise shape analyses were performed on subcortical regions including the thalamus, caudate, putamen, pallidum, hippocampus, and amygdala. The volumes of thalamus nuclei were also calculated.
Results
A total of 108 patients were included. Among them, 55 were categorized as SRE and 53 as non-SRE. FCD type II was predominantly observed in the frontal lobe and default mode networks. Multivariate analyses revealed that smaller FCD lesions (p = 0.035) and the absence of an aura (p = 0.041) were independently associated with SRE. However, FCD within the dorsal attention network (p = 0.048) was associated with non-SRE. No statistical difference was found between the SRE and non-SRE groups in terms of the volume of the thalamus or individual thalamic nuclei. Additionally, no regional shape alterations were observed in patients with SRE compared to those with non-SRE.
Conclusions
Our study identifies distinctive clinical characteristics and specific co-localized neural network associations between SRE and non-SRE in patients with FCD type II. Recognizing these distinct features is crucial, as it enables further research and enhances in improving the diagnosis of FCD type II.
DOI
10.1016/j.jocn.2026.112301
PMID
42753530
Research metadata (titles, abstracts, authors, publication dates) is sourced from Europe PMC, which aggregates content from PubMed/MEDLINE, PubMed Central, and other providers under the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM/NCBI). NLM does not claim copyright on abstracts; the original journal publishers or authors may hold rights to the full articles. AI-generated summaries are derived only from the abstract, never the full text, and are always labeled as AI-generated.
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