Molecular and subregion mechanisms of episodic memory phenotypes in temporal lobe epilepsy.

Memory dysfunction is prevalent in temporal lobe epilepsy, but little is known about the underlying pathophysiological etiologies. Here, we use spatial quantitation to examine differential expression of targeted proteins and transcripts in four brain regions essential for episodic memory (dentate gyrus, CA3, CA1, neocortex) between temporal lobe epilepsy patients with and without episodic memory impairment. Brain tissues were obtained from dominant temporal lobectomies in 16 adults with pharmacoresistant temporal lobe epilepsy associated with hippocampal sclerosis. Verbal memory tests from routine pre-operative clinical care were used to classify episodic memory as impaired or intact. Digital spatial profiling of a targeted protein panel and the whole transcriptome was performed using tissue sections from the temporal neocortex and hippocampus. We performed differential expression and pathway enrichment analysis between the memory groups within each temporal lobe region. Several proteins associated with neurodegenerative disease were overexpressed in the neocortex of patients with impaired memory, corroborating our prior findings using bulk transcriptomics. Spatial transcriptomics identified numerous differentially expressed transcripts in both neocortical and hippocampal subregions between memory groups, with little overlap across subregions. The strongest molecular signal was observed in the CA3 hippocampal subregion, known to play an essential role in memory encoding. Enrichment analyses revealed BDNF as a central hub in CA3-related networks regulating phenotype-relevant processes such as cognition, memory, long-term potentiation and neuritogenesis (