The Effects of Smoking on Neuropsychological Functioning Among Patients with Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

Cigarette smoking is one of the leading causes of preventable diseases and death, with approximately 64.5 million active smokers in the United States. Chronic smoking has been associated with brain changes that include global brain atrophy, structural and biochemical abnormalities, and neuropsychological deficits. Compared to the substantial volume of research on the cardiovascular, cancer-related and pulmonary health consequences associated with chronic smoking, surprisingly little research has been committed to exploring its effects on human neurocognitive functioning. The present study focused on the cognitive effects of chronic cigarette smoking in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). Smoking is important to study in this population because cognitive profiles are relied on extensively for treatment planning, and thus the discrimination of smoking-related cognitive patterns from those secondary to epilepsy has potential prognostic implications. To our knowledge, this study is the first to look at the effects of smoking on cognition among patients with focal lesions. We predicted that smokers will perform more poorly on measures of neuropsychological functioning compared to nonsmokers. In addition, we predicted that, among smokers, greater smoking history as measured by total packs of cigarettes smoked over one’s lifetime will cause greater impairment in neuropsychological functioning. The primary significant finding was that greater smoking (as measured by both total lifetime consumption and number of months smoked) was associated in a dose-dependent manner with poorer performance on measures of nonverbal, visual memory among smokers. The hypothesis that greater smoking history would be associated with greater cognitive impairment was supported for three of the neuropsychological measures examined in the current study. The hypothesis that smokers would perform more poorly than nonsmokers was not strongly supported in the current study, as no significant group differences were identified. Smoking-related memory dysfunction may be related to involvement of limbic memory regions necessary for explicit memory, which are also the neuroanatomic structures highly sensitive to chronic cigarette smoking. Our findings indicate that TLE patients who smoke are at greater risk for memory impairments, a finding that may have implications for the prediction of cognitive outcome following temporal lobectomy as well as treatment recommendations for patients who continue to smoke. Future studies should continue to investigate the effects of chronic smoking among individuals with focal brain abnormalities, particularly among populations that have similarly high rates of smoking.

Name thesis:degree_name

PhD

Level thesis:degree_level

doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Arts and Sciences: Psychology

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Cincinnati

Year dc:date

2012

Author dc:creator

• Baker, Christopher J.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Shear, Paula

• Psychology
• epilepsy
• smoking
• cognition
• memory
• temporal
• cigarette

Statement dc:rights

• unrestricted
• This thesis or dissertation is protected by copyright: all rights reserved. It may not be copied or redistributed beyond the terms of applicable copyright laws.

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1353342034

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:etd.ohiolink.edu:ucin1353342034