[Press Release: University of Gothenburg and EurekAlert]
Epileptic activity in the brain can affect language development in children, and EEG registrations should therefore be carried out more frequently on children with severe language impairment to identify more readily those who may need medical treatment, reveals a thesis from the Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg.
The thesis studied 60 children of varying ages, divided into groups. The first group comprised children with language dysfunction, for example children with slow speech development who find it difficult to express themselves or who have an inadequate language comprehension.
The second group consisted of children with epilepsy, while the third comprised children with language dysfunction and epileptic brain activity, sometimes without epileptic seizures. The study was carried out in conjunction with speech and language pathologists, pediatric neurologists and neuropsychologists at the Queen Silvia Children’s Hospital in Gothenburg.
“We reviewed patient records of children with residual speech and language problems at school start, and could see that these children also had other underlying problems,” says Gunilla Rejnö-Habte Selassie, speech and language pathologist and researcher at the Department of Clinical Neuroscience and Rehabilitation.
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