Abstract
The Landau—Kleffner syndrome (LKS) is a well-defined childhood disorder in spite of some variants. An acquired aphasia, multifocal spikes and spike and wave discharges, epileptic seizures and behavioral disturbances characterize the syndrome.
We studied a ten-year old boy with LKS starting at five years old with myoclonic seizures (eye blinking and falls) and a progressive and almost total aphasia. There was no seizure response to valproate therapy. An electroclinical myoclonic status was reverted by clonazepam, which was maintained in low doses with complete suppression of seizures even after clonazepam withdrawal. There has been slight language improvement during follow-up.
The influence of epilepsy on cognition including language tasks may also involve permanent deficits on reference skills due to an interference on local maturation of neural aggregates and may be suggested as a cause of Landau—Kleffner syndrome.
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Da Silva, A.M., Nunes, B. (1995). Landau—Kleffner Syndrome: A Neuronal Maturation Deficit?. In: Leong, C.K., Joshi, R.M. (eds) Developmental and Acquired Dyslexia. Neuropsychology and Cognition, vol 9. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1241-5_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1241-5_11
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