Zoe Thayer

• Medical Professional at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital

Introduction Encephalitis associated with anti-GABA-B antibodies is a rare phenomenon which has been typically shown to manifest as a paraneoplastic process, usually associated with small-cell lung cancer. The present case is an unusual presentation of cognitive decline in the context of GABA-B antibody positivity in association with Erdheim-Cheste...

Objective: We aimed to (i) compare the clinical, neuropsychological, and neuroimaging characteristics of unprovoked late-onset epilepsy (LOE) patients with cognitive symptoms against probable Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients; (ii) clarify how neurodegeneration and other processes could be implicated in the cognitive symptoms of unprovoked LOE pat...

Mental health comorbidities are prevalent and problematic in patients with seizures but often suboptimally managed. To address common gaps in care, the Integrated Mental Health Care Pathways Task Force of the International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE) Psychiatry Commission was tasked with providing education and guidance on the integration of men...

While it is often stated that psychiatric co-morbidity in PWE is under-recognized and under-treated, little research has directly examined this assertion. The aims of this study were to understand the rates of confirmed diagnosis and treatment of depression and anxiety in people with epilepsy (PWE). Two samples were recruited: a hospital sample of...

Animal data indicates the hippocampus assists appetite-regulation. We tested this in humans, contrasting two patients (DW, JC) with hippocampal damage to controls on an appetite-regulation test conducted hungry and sated. When hungry, controlsviewed palatable snacks and reported a desire to eat them, a memory-based judgment. After sampling them, th...

Accelerated long-term forgetting (ALF) is a recently discovered memory disorder characterized by intact acquisition and retention over short delays, followed by abnormally fast rates of forgetting. Accelerated long-term forgetting has been repeatedly found in children, but not in adults, with genetic generalized epilepsy (GGE). It is possible that...

Sleep difficulties are commonly reported by patients with epilepsy and can have a detrimental impact on overall quality of life. The purpose of this pilot study was to assess the efficacy of a psychotherapeutic approach, namely Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I), in improving sleep quality in patients with epilepsy. Twenty outpatient...

Objective The study objective was to develop and validate the first epilepsy‐specific anxiety survey instrument (Epilepsy Anxiety Survey Instrument [EASI]) alongside a briefer screening instrument to detect anxiety disorders in routine clinical practice (brEASI). Methods The instruments were developed utilizing a mixed‐methods approach in four rel...

Objective: There is an elevated prevalence of anxiety disorders among people with epilepsy, and the comorbidity of anxiety in epilepsy is associated with adverse medical and psychosocial outcomes. Despite its importance, little is known about what psychosocial or epilepsy factors may be associated with the development of anxiety. The aim of this q...

Background: Accelerated Long Term Forgetting (ALF) is usually defined as a memory impairment that is seen only at long delays (e.g., after days or weeks) and not at shorter delays (e.g., 30min) typically used in clinical settings. Research indicates that ALF occurs in some patients with epilepsy, but the incidence rates and underlying causes have...

Interoception is the ability to consciously perceive internal bodily states. Neuroimaging suggests that the insula (IC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) mediate interoception, while studies involving patients/animals with brain lesions suggest the medial temporal lobe (MTL) is particularly important. One reason for these contrasting conclusions...

Accelerated long-term forgetting (ALF) is a condition in which normal memory performance is displayed after short delays, but significant memory loss is detected when memory is tested after several days or weeks. This condition has been reported in patients with epilepsy, but there are few normative scores available for its detection in clinical pr...

This study compared a 9-week individualised Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) programme for people with epilepsy (PWE), with a wait-list control. Fifty-nine PWE were randomised and 45 (75%) completed post-treatment outcomes. People with lower quality of life (QoL), particularly for cognitive functioning, were more likely to drop out. Analyses based...

The factors contributing to accelerated long-term forgetting (ALF) are not yet clear. In this study, a 12-item word list was presented repeatedly to 23 patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) and 27 control participants (NC) until it was recalled completely on two consecutive trials or until 12 trials were undertaken. Compared to NCs, patients w...

Purpose: Some patients with epilepsy demonstrate normal memory when this is tested at relatively short intervals (e.g., 30 min), but substantial loss over longer delay periods (e.g., days or weeks) when compared to healthy control subjects. This pattern of "accelerated long-term forgetting" (ALF) affects the everyday lives of patients, yet goes un...

The aim of this study was to compare the efficacy of the Neurological Depressive Disorders Inventory for Epilepsy (NDDI-E) and the depression component of the Hospital Anxiety Depression Scale (HADS-D) for identifying depression and suicide risk in adults with epilepsy. A total of 147 (87 female [59% ]) outpatients attending a tertiary epilepsy cen...

Memory problems are common in patients with a range of neurological conditions, but there have been few attempts to provide and evaluate the usefulness of memory training for groups of neurological outpatients. We used a waitlist-controlled trial design to assess the effectiveness of a newly created, 6-session intervention, which involved training...

Patients with epilepsy experience memory problems, but there have been few attempts to provide and evaluate the effectiveness of memory training. We designed a 6-week, group-based, psychoeducation and strategy course that was evaluated using a waitlist crossover design, with three assessments conducted 12 weeks apart. Thirty-one patients with a his...

A 44-year-old woman presented with focal retrograde amnesia and complaints of rapid forgetting in the absence of episodes of transient cognitive disturbance. Her MRI and 2-deoxy-2-[18F]fluoro-D-glucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) were normal. On standard neuropsychological tests she performed within the normal range although a test of au...

Certain odors have tastelike qualities when sniffed. To the extent that these qualities are akin to real taste experiences, impairment in perception of odor-induced tastes should be accompanied by taste impairment, and vice versa. Twelve patients were selected with possible odor-induced taste impairments or general taste impairments via a screening...

We investigated the role of cerebral motor structures during mental hand rotation. Neural activity was measured with event-related potentials (ERPs) in 16 healthy participants while they performed handedness judgments of visually presented hands. Mental rotation was associated with ERP amplitude modulations as early as 170 ms but most strongly duri...

We measured brain potentials from human subjects performing a mental rotation task requiring right-left judgments of misoriented hands, and a control task requiring palm-back judgments of the same stimuli. High-density, 128-channel event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 16 normal, right-handed subjects. There was a main effect of task a...

A variety of immune therapies have been used in an attempt to reduce the immune destruction of the insulin secreting beta cells which results in insulin dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM). This study investigated the use of intravenous gammaglobulin therapy (IVIG) in children and adults with IDDM who participated in a two-year randomised controlled...