Temporal lobe epilepsy-induced neurodegeneration and cognitive deficits: Implications for aging

Epilepsy is a neurological condition associated with seizures, neurodegeneration, circuit reorganization, and other structural and functional abnormalities. These elements ultimately lead to behavioural alterations such as anxiety, depression, and importantly cognitive impairment like learning disability and memory impairment. These factors can attribute to acceleration of aging and cognitive impairment in middle-aged people, which is otherwise evident in dementia and Alzheimer's disease among elderly people. In addition to epilepsy per se, several studies have shown that conventional anti-epileptic drugs used to treat epilepsy also contributes to aging and cognitive deficits through their adverse effects. The current review focuses on prevention of accelerated aging and cognitive impairment through an unconventional approach of combining non-pharmacological (enriched environment) and pharmacological therapy, which reduces the factors responsible for accentuated aging and memory impairment in chronic epileptic condition.