Sexual Behavior in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

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Abstract
PROFOUND changes of sexual behavior in the from of hypersexuality are well-known effects of bilateral temporal lobectomy in animals.1,2Comparable sexual changes following bilateral temporal lobectomies in humans have been reported.3The large body of reports on the effects of unilateral temporal lobectomies for epilepsy, assembled over the past 15 years, contains only occasional brief references to changes in sexual behavior. This lack of data is paralleled by a similar scantiness of information on the sexual behavior of patients with temporal lobe epilepsy. This is particularly surprising, since the only systematic study of the sexual behavior in psychomotor epileptics reported by Gastaut and Collomb had revealed very striking findings.4The authors had noted a hyposexuality in several hundred patients with psychomotor seizures and found this observation confirmed in 26 of a series of 36 patients who were systematically studied. The authors emphasize that this sexual alteration