More than fifth years have passed since Brenda Milner has started the epilepsy surgery neuropsychological evaluation and tests in use nowadays are mostly the same, i.e., there was little if any progress in terms of the development of new and more sensitive or specific methods. We may have reached the maximum of diagnostic differentiation with standard neuropsychological tests, and without inclusion of experimental test condition, more elaborate diagnostics will not be possible. We have examined several issues relevant to the utility of the current evaluation and also, some alternatives to help making surgery more safe in relation to the cognitive functions. We discuss also, the development of new paradigms to activate cortical functions, like functional Magnetic Resonance. In this article, we discuss neuropsychological investigation of patients epilepsy surgery and whether the approach of memory and language evaluation used is useful in predicting the extent of memory deficits following epilepsy surgery. Moreover, we make reference the new perspectives of investigation in this context.
neuropsychological evaluation; refractory epilepsy; language; memory; Intracarotid Amobarbital Test; Dichotic Listening Test; functional Magnetic Resonance