Do patients with psychogenic nonepileptic seizures produce trustworthy findings on neuropsychological tests?

Abstract

Drane et al. (2006) has recently raised the possibility that patients with psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES) may make poor effort in taking neuropsychological tests in comparison with patients with epilepsy (ES). Therefore, findings previously reported with PNES patients may be in error, especially with regard to tests of mental abilities. Using the same measure of effort used by Drane et al. (2006) but with more broadly selected patients, this paper attempts to replicate their findings with new samples of ES (n = 65) and PNES (n = 32) cases. However, their findings could not be replicated, and no differences in test taking effort could be demonstrated across the groups. The highly selected samples of Drane et al. (2006) appear to be responsible for their results, and neuropsychological findings with PNES patients appear to be as trustworthy as those with ES patients. © 2008 International League Against Epilepsy.