Abstract #1581

Liu H, Vu L, Baik H, Su M, Nalcioglu O, Swartz B

To evaluate the metabolic changes from the anterior cingulate in JME patients and patients with frontal lobe epilepsy (FLE) compared to normal age-matched controls, and to investigate whether metabolic abnormalities are associated with thalamo-cortical loop dysfunction. Single-voxel MR spectroscopy was performed using a STEAM sequence. JME patients showed significantly lower NAA/Cr and (NAA/H2O)x103 compared to controls (p = 0.04; p = 0.01). The FLE patients also had significantly lower NAA compared to controls ( p = 0.04; p = 0.04). We demonstrated that 1H-MRS can be used to detect the metabolic changes not visible with structural MR imaging in JME and FLE patients.