Epilepsy patients often report memory deficits despite normal objective testing, suggesting that available measures are insensitive or that non-mnemonic factors are involved. The Visual Paired Comparison Task (VPCT) assesses novelty preference, the tendency to fixate on novel images rather than previously viewed items, requiring recognition memory for the “old” images. As novelty preference is a sensitive measure of hippocampal-dependent memory function, we predicted impaired VPCT performance in epilepsy patients compared to healthy controls. We assessed 26 healthy adult controls and 31 epilepsy patients (16 focal-onset, 13 generalized-onset, 2 unknown-onset) with the VPCT using delays of 2 or 30 s between encoding and recognition. Fifteen healthy controls and 17 epilepsy patients (10 focal-onset, 5 generalized-onset, 2 unknown-onset) completed the task at 2-, 5-, and 30-minute delays. Subjects also performed standard memory measures, including the Medical College of Georgia (MCG) Paragraph Test, California Verbal Learning Test-Second Edition (CVLT-II), and Brief Visual Memory Test-Revised (BVMT-R). The epilepsy group was high functioning, with greater estimated IQ (p = 0.041), greater years of education (p = 0.034), and higher BVMT-R scores (p = 0.024) compared to controls. Both the control group and epilepsy cohort, as well as focal- and generalized-onset subgroups, had intact novelty preference at the 2- and 30-second delays (p-values ≤ 0.001) and declined at 30 min (p-values > 0.05). Only the epilepsy patients had early declines at 2- and 5-minute delays (controls with intact novelty preference at p = 0.003 and p ≤ 0.001, respectively; epilepsy groups’ p-values > 0.05). Memory for the “old” items decayed more rapidly in overall, focal-onset, and generalized-onset epilepsy groups. The VPCT detected deficits while standard memory measures were largely intact, suggesting that the VPCT may be a more sensitive measure of temporal lobe memory function than standard neuropsychological batteries.

中文翻译：

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通过眼动追踪评估新奇偏好：癫痫患者识别记忆受损的灵敏测量

尽管进行了正常的客观测试，癫痫患者仍经常报告记忆缺陷，这表明可用的测量方法不敏感或涉及非记忆因素。视觉配对比较任务（VPCT）评估新奇偏好，即关注新图像而不是以前看过的项目的倾向，需要对“旧”图像进行识别记忆。由于新奇偏好是海马依赖性记忆功能的敏感指标，因此我们预测与健康对照相比，癫痫患者的 VPCT 表现会受损。我们使用编码和识别之间延迟 2 或 30 秒的 VPCT 评估了 26 名健康成人对照和 31 名癫痫患者（16 名局灶性发病、13 名全身性发病、2 名未知发病）。 15 名健康对照者和 17 名癫痫患者（10 名局灶性发作、5 名全身性发作、2 名未知发作）分别在 2 分钟、5 分钟和 30 分钟延迟后完成了任务。受试者还进行了标准记忆测量，包括佐治亚医学院 (MCG) 段落测试、加州语言学习测试第二版 (CVLT-II) 和简短视觉记忆测试修订版 (BVMT-R)。与对照组相比，癫痫组的功能较高，估计智商更高（p = 0.041），受教育年限更长（p = 0.034），并且 BVMT-R 分数更高（p = 0.024）。对照组和癫痫队列，以及局灶性和全身性亚组，在 2 秒和 30 秒延迟时都具有完整的新奇偏好（p 值 ≤ 0.001），并在 30 分钟时下降（p 值 > 0.05） ）。只有癫痫患者在延迟 2 分钟和 5 分钟时出现早期衰退（具有完整新颖性偏好的对照组分别为 p = 0.003 和 p ≤ 0.001；癫痫组的 p 值 > 0.05）。在整体性癫痫、局灶性癫痫和全身性癫痫组中，对“旧”项目的记忆衰退得更快。 VPCT 检测到缺陷，而标准记忆测量基本完好，这表明 VPCT 可能是比标准神经心理学电池更敏感的颞叶记忆功能测量。