Marilyn Jones-Gotman

McGill University | McGill

Introduction: High-frequency oscillations (HFOs, 80-500Hz) are newly-described EEG markers of epileptogenicity. The proportion of physiological and pathological HFOs is unclear, as frequency analysis is insufficient for separating the two types of events. For instance, ripples (80-250Hz) also occur physiologically during memory consolidation proce...

Neurobehavioral and cognition problems are highly prevalent in epilepsy, but most research studies to date have not adequately addressed the precise nature of the relationship between these comorbidities and seizures. To address this complex issue and to facilitate collaborative, innovative research in the rising field of neurobehavior-al comorbidi...

Obesity has been associated with impaired executive functions including working memory. Less explored is the influence of obesity on learning and memory. In the current study we assessed stimulus reward association learning, explicit learning and memory and working memory in healthy weight, overweight and obese individuals. Explicit learning and me...

We report a long-term follow-up investigation of a patient who was operated in 1954 to relieve intractable temporal lobe seizures characterized by automatism and amnesia. Neuropsychological review at 16 months after surgery showed a slight residual impairment of verbal comprehension and verbal recall and good nonverbal skills. Seizure-free since th...

The insula plays an important role both in emotion processing and in the generation of epileptic seizures. In the current study we examined thickness of insular cortices and bilateral skin conductance responses (SCR) in healthy subjects in addition to a small number of patients with temporal lobe epilepsy. SCR measures arousal and is used to assess...

Material-specific memory impairments are a well-established consequence of unilateral medial temporal lobe damage. We used fMRI to investigate encoding and recognition of verbal and nonverbal stimuli using adaptations of tasks used successfully in clinical evaluations of patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). We studied two patient groups, one...

Epilepsy is one of the most common disorders of the brain, and these patients often suffer from memory problems. There are a number of reasons for this: seizures can directly affect the brain in ways that disturb memory; epilepsy often results from trouble in brain regions closely linked to memory; the treatment of epilepsy can affect memory; epile...

This chapter reviews the most widely used episodic memory tests and presents key aspects of the authors' approach to memory assessment, developed at the Montreal Neurological Institute. The guiding principles are: nonverbal memory tests must be truly nonverbal; learning paradigms ensure proper encoding; verbal and nonverbal tests should be matched...

Previous functional magnetic resonance imaging studies in two rare patients, together with microneurography and psychophysical observations in healthy subjects, have demonstrated a system of mechanosensitive C-fiber tactile (CT) afferents sensitive to slowly moving stimuli. They project to the posterior insular cortex and signal pleasant aspects of...

Skin conductance responses (SCR) measure objective arousal in response to emotionally-relevant stimuli. Central nervous system influence on SCR is exerted differentially by the two hemispheres. Differences between SCR recordings from the left and right hands may therefore be expected. This study focused on emotionally expressive faces, known to be...

Using positron emission tomography, we investigated whether regional brain activations differ as a function of attending to pleasant versus unpleasant components of odors. There were two experimental (attention to pleasantness and attention to unpleasantness) and one control (baseline) condition. The stimuli presented during the two experimental co...

Responses to affective stimuli are usually studied in just one sensory system at a time. However, this is rarely the way they are experienced. We were interested in how combining affective stimuli of similar intensities across two sensory modalities (smell and vision) would affect both behavioral responses (ratings) and psychophysiological response...

Sex differences in various cognitive abilities have been demonstrated in terms of performance differentials and, more recently, in differences in activation patterns during fMRI. Hemispheric lateralization is sometimes accentuated in sex differences; e.g., women demonstrating greater activation of the left hemisphere than men during verbal tasks. W...

We performed MRI volumetric measurements of the amygdala (AM) and hippocampal formation (HF) in a group of 43 patients with temporal lobe epilepsy not controlled by optimal drug treatment. Fifteen patients (35%) had a history of prolonged febrile convulsions (PFC) in early childhood; 30 patients underwent surgery, and histopathology was available i...

Chemosensory-based communication is a vital signaling tool in most species, and evidence has recently emerged in support of the notion that humans also use social chemosignals (so-called pheromones) to communicate. An ongoing controversy does exist, however, concerning the receptor organ through which these chemicals are processed. There is a wides...

Remembering meaningful information is an important component of verbal memory. However, findings from existing story memory tests have been mixed in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). We developed a test, the Story Learning and Memory (SLAM) test, in which a story is presented repeatedly until a performance criterion is reached, and verbat...

Awareness of deficits is often impaired following disruption of the right hemisphere. Intracarotid anesthetic procedures (IAPs) represent a unique method by which we can assess functioning of each hemisphere in isolation. We used this technique to explore deficits of awareness of specific functions-motor ability, naming, and comprehension-in patien...

Neuropsychology plays a vital role in the treatment of epilepsy, providing information on the effects of seizures on higher cortical functions through the measurement of behavioral abilities and disabilities. This is accomplished through the design, administration and interpretation of neuropsychological tests, including those used in functional ne...

We investigated associations between olfactory function and gray matter thickness in 46 healthy young subjects by means of an automated technique for measuring cortical thickness. We used an extended version of the Sniffin' Sticks test to assess olfactory function, including odor threshold, concentration discrimination, quality discrimination, and...

Kin recognition, an evolutionary phenomenon ubiquitous among phyla, is thought to promote an individual's genes by facilitating nepotism and avoidance of inbreeding. Whereas isolating and studying kin recognition mechanisms in humans using auditory and visual stimuli is problematic because of the high degree of conscious recognition of the individu...

The intracarotid amobarbital procedure (IAP) has for over 50 years been an important component of the presurgical investigation of patients with epilepsy who are candidates for surgical intervention as treatment for their seizures. Owing to increasing frequency and duration of amobarbital shortages, alternatives for this drug have been sought and i...

Neuropsychological expertise depends on the use of sensitive tests and a solid database about those tests, and fortunately this is an area of growth. Overall, the field is maturing well and there are many instruments in current use for presurgical evaluation. This chapter provides a brief overview of some of these, organized primarily by brain regi...

Flavour perception derives from an interplay of the senses that conveys information about the odour, taste, texture, or spiciness of ingested foods. Although interactions between smell and taste have been investigated extensively, we do not know a lot about the effect of oral chemical irritation on odour perception. Therefore, the impact of capsaic...

Romantic love is one of our most potent and powerful emotions, but very little is known with respect to the hormonal and psychological mechanisms in play. Romantic love is thought to help intimate partners stay committed to each other and two mechanisms have been proposed to mediate this commitment: increased attention towards one's partner or defl...

Mnemonic deficits in patients with medial temporal lobe (MTL) damage arising from temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) are traditionally constrained to long-term episodic memory, sparing short-term and working memory (WM). This view of WM as being independent of MTL structures has recently been challenged by a small number of patient and neuroimaging studi...

Objective clinical evaluation of memory frequently requires serial testing but the issue of whether multi-formed tests are equivalent and can be used interchangeably is seldom examined. An added problem in bilingual Canadian settings is the extent to which it is appropriate to measure French speakers' performance on translations of English tests. T...

Visual and auditory stimuli of high social and ecological importance are processed in the brain by specialized neuronal networks. To date, this has not been demonstrated for olfactory stimuli. By means of positron emission tomography, we sought to elucidate the neuronal substrates behind body odor perception to answer the question of whether the ce...

Understanding of olfactory dysfunction in Alzheimer's disease (AD) remains limited. In particular, it is not known how early in the course of the disease olfactory deficits occur, and whether they are restricted to identification or involve other aspects of olfaction. We studied olfactory (odor detection thresholds, quality discrimination, and iden...

Recently, we found that healthy young adults remember odors leading to large emotional reactions better than odors provoking smaller emotional reactions. Because the amygdala is believed to be critically implicated in memory for emotionally arousing information and because it is part of the primary olfactory area, we hypothesized that patients with...

We recently demonstrated that a supine position causes a decrease in olfactory sensitivity compared with an upright position. We pursued that initial finding in 3 separate experiments in which we explored the extent of, and mechanism underlying, this phenomenon. In Experiment 1, we replicated the decrease in olfactory sensitivity when in a supine c...

Determination of site of dysfunctionPotential pitfalls in presurgical evaluationEvaluation of frontal lobe functionEvaluation of parietal lobesEvaluation of occipital lobesEvaluation of temporal neocortexMedial temporal lobe function: memory assessmentIntracarotid amobarbital procedure (IAP)SummaryAcknowledgements

We examined whether presenting an odor with a positive, neutral, or negative name would influence how people perceive it. In experiment 1, 40 participants rated 15 odors for their pleasantness, intensity, and arousal. In experiment 2, 30 participants passively smelled 10 odors while their skin conductance (SC), heart rate (HR), and sniffing were re...

The role of the medial temporal lobe in learning and memory has been well established in research on humans and other animals. In humans, clinical and neuroimaging studies typically suggest material-specific lateralization in which the left and right temporal lobes are associated with verbal and nonverbal memory, respectively. It is often assumed t...

Specific anosmia is a term that describes an inability to perceive a particular odorant in the context of an otherwise normal olfactory acuity. The most common example, for the odor of androstenone, has been ascribed a prevalence ranging from 2 to 45%. In two experiments we sought to determine whether this wide range could be explained by the diffe...

Previous studies have demonstrated that body position can alter auditory sensitivity. Here we demonstrate for the first time that olfactory sensitivity for the commonly used odor phenyl ethyl alcohol (PEA) (rose odor) is also dependent on body position. By using successive dilutions presented in a staircase protocol, we determined olfactory thresho...

Introduction There was a time in the history of anatomy and medicine when the temporal lobes were considered to be the olfactory brain. In an early paper describing a patient with a brain tumor and olfactory auras, Jackson and Beevor (1889a) refer to the ‘anterior tip of the temporo-sphenoidal lobe’ as the ‘pyriform or hippocampal lobule’ (p. 350)....

The intracarotid amobarbital procedure (IAP) is an important part of comprehensive investigation of patients who are candidates for surgical treatment of epilepsy. Owing to repeated and lengthy shortages of amobarbital, causing delays in elective surgery, attempts have been made to find a suitable alternative anesthetic. The authors report their ex...

We used positron emission tomography (PET) to investigate brain regions associated with odor imagery. Changes in regional cerebral blood flow (CBF) during odor imagery were compared with changes during nonspecific expectation of olfactory stimuli and with those during odor perception. Sixty-seven healthy volunteers were screened for their odor imag...

To report the assessment of a patient exhibiting gustatory agnosia. Preoperative and postoperative neuropsychological, neuroimaging, and chemosensory evaluations were performed in a 39-year-old woman undergoing surgical treatment for intractable epilepsy. Preoperative MRIs showed bilateral (right > left) atrophy in the medial temporal lobes and com...

We investigated odor-induced changes in taste perception (OICTP), by examining the influence of strawberry and soy sauce odors on perceived sweetness (Experiment 1) and saltiness (Experiment 2). We explored whether taste-smell interactions occur at the central level, by delivering odorants (strawberry, soy sauce, odorless water) and tastants (sucro...

We examined odor imagery by looking for its effects on detection of weak odors. Seventy-two healthy subjects performed a forced-choice odor detection task in one of three conditions: after being told to imagine an odor (odor imagery), after being told to imagine an object (visual imagery), or without having received imagery instructions (no-imagery...

We assessed the influence of different odors on detection of a sweet tastant, and the ability of imagined odors to elicit the same effects as perceived odors on taste perception. The tastant used was sucrose, and the two odorants were strawberry and ham. In the first experiment, participants either smelled or imagined one of two odors during taste...

INTRO There is strong evidence supporting the validity of word learning tests to assess left medial temporal dysfunction. At the Montreal Neurological Institute, Abstract Word Listlearning (AWL) and the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test(RAVLT) are among the measures currently used to assessverbal memory in patients with epilepsy. Previous studiesha...

Seven healthy subjects underwent two [(11)C]raclopride positron emission tomography (PET) scans, one following a 16-h fast and the other after consumption of a favorite meal (following a 16-h fast) in counterbalanced fashion. Before and after each scan subjects gave ratings of hunger/fullness and desire to eat. In addition, meal pleasantness rating...

We investigated possible cognitive effects of topiramate (TPM) in polypharmacy on patients with intractable epilepsy. Study 1 evaluated 22 consecutively admitted patients whose antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) on admission to the Montreal Neurological Hospital included TPM. Performance on neuropsychological tests administered on and subsequently off TPM...

Selective amygdalohippocampectomy (SelAH) is used in the treatment of mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE). The goal of this study was to determine factors predictive of poor postoperative seizure control (Engel Class III or IV) following SelAH. A retrospective study was conducted of 27 patients with poor seizure control postoperatively (Engel III/...

Three patients with ulcerative colitis (UC) and without any other risk factors, developed intractable status epilepticus de novo. Intractable temporal lobe seizures followed and were investigated 7-19 years later. Two had bi-temporal abnormalities and catastrophic memory loss and the third, severe temporoparietal damage. Status occurred in the cont...

Memory deficits in epileptic patients have been found in some, but not all studies assessing the effects of side of seizures and resection from a temporal lobe on cognitive performance. The purpose of this study was to provide a quantitative review of previous studies on this issue. Based on conventional meta-analytic procedures, we identified 33 s...

The role of temporal lobe structures in olfactory memory was investigated by (i) the examination of odour learning and memory in patients who had undergone resection from a temporal lobe (including primary olfactory regions) for the treatment of intractable epilepsy; and (ii) the examination of brain function during odour memory tasks as assessed v...

The clinical utility of current face recognition tests has been questioned. To evaluate if a new paradigm may measure this type of memory more accurately, the authors created a novel test to examine face learning (previously uninvestigated) and short- and long-term retention. For this initial investigation of test sensitivity to hemisphere of dysfu...

We performed successive H(2)(15)O-PET scans on volunteers as they ate chocolate to beyond satiety. Thus, the sensory stimulus and act (eating) were held constant while the reward value of the chocolate and motivation of the subject to eat were manipulated by feeding. Non-specific effects of satiety (such as feelings of fullness and autonomic change...

The majority of working memory research has been carried out within the visual and auditory modalities, leaving it unclear how other modalities would map onto currently proposed working memory models. In this study we examined the previously uninvestigated area of olfactory working memory. Our aim was to investigate if olfactory working memory woul...

We used a modified version of the Spatial Taste Test to assess taste intensity perception in patients with either left or right temporal resection from the anteromedial temporal lobe (AMTL), and a group of control subjects. Sweet, sour, salty and bitter solutions were applied onto discrete locations of the tongue to stimulate either left or right f...

Severe amnesia in epileptic patients is a catastrophic condition that may be due to different etiologies. Because of the striking findings and thorough neuropsychological studies of Patient H.M., the literature has focused on postsurgical occurrence of such memory impairment, with much less emphasis on other causes. Here we summarize, for compariso...

To investigate the role of the anterior temporal lobe in taste perception, we compared taste intensity estimations made by patients who had removal from either the left or the right anterior temporal lobe for the treatment of intractable epilepsy with a group of healthy control subjects. Estimations were made for five concentrations of each of four...

This chapter outlines the basic anatomy of the olfactory and gustatory systems and reviews findings from human lesion studies of patients with focal surgical excision. The olfactory studies have investigated detection thresholds, quality discrimination, memory, and odor identification in patients with a temporal- or frontal-lobe resection. In human...

Olfactory processing in the human brain was examined using positron emission tomography. Twelve normal volunteers were scanned while smelling pairs of odors: they were asked to judge which odor was more pleasant in one condition, and which was more intense in a second condition; they also were scanned while sniffing an odorless stimulus. As in prio...

Neuropsychological assessment consists of a comprehensive evaluation of cognitive functioning and most often some evaluation of motor skills and sensory status also. Cognitive functions sampled typically include "intelligence" (IQ tests), attention, language skills, visuospatial abilities, "executive skills" and other abilities associated with fron...

MRI volumetric measurements (MRIvol) have been proven reliable in determining mesial temporal atrophy in patients with TLE. We attempted to correlate the clinical features with different patterns of hippocampal formation (HF) and amygdala (AM) atrophy in patients with TLE without foreign tissue lesion. We studied 65 patients with refractory TLE. Th...

In an effort to define human cortical gustatory areas we reviewed functional neuroimaging data for which coordinates standardized in Talairach proportional space were available. We observed a wide distribution of peaks within the insula and parietal and frontal opercula, suggesting multiple gustatory regions within this cortical area. Multiple peak...

IN an effort to define human cortical gustatory areas we reviewed functional neuroimaging data for which coordinates standardized in Talairach proportional space were available. We observed a wide distribution of peaks within the insula and parietal and frontal opercula, suggesting multiple gustatory regions within this cortical area. Multiple peak...

In previous positron emission tomography (PET) studies we have shown significant regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) increases during olfactory stimulation: unilaterally in the right orbitofrontal cortex, and bilaterally in the inferior frontal and temporal lobes (piriform cortex). In the present study we investigated brain function during differen...

Two children with isolated congenital anosmia, a rare syndrome of deficient restricted neuronal migration, are presented with early diagnosis confirmed by standardized smell testing and detailed neuroimaging studies. Recognition of this disorder and its spectrum of presentations provides important insights into the molecular mechanisms underlying t...

We examined the relation between language dominance and regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) during the intracarotid amobarbital procedure (IAP). A previous report limited to three patients suggested that dominant rather than nondominant hemisphere IAP may have a differential effect on rCBF. Behavioral assessment during the IAP also suggests that do...

We used positron emission tomography to evaluate differential processing of olfactory, gustatory and combined olfactory and gustatory (flavor) stimuli as indicated by comparison of evoked cerebral blood flow (CBF) changes during these conditions. We found significant CBF decreases in primary gustatory and secondary gustatory and olfactory cortices...

To investigate possible distinct contributions of different temporal-lobe structures to odour identification, the University of Pennsylvania Smell Identification Test was administered monorhinally to seizure-free patients who had undergone one of three types of temporal-lobe resection practised in three different institutions for surgical treatment...