All children with this disorder have abnormal electrical activity in one, sometimes both temporal lobes of the brain, which are the areas of the brain responsible for processing language. Two-thirds of children with Landau Kleffner Syndrome have seizures, with nighttime seizures common. Many children have very few seizures and these are readily controlled by anti-epileptic drugs. Some children never have obvious seizures, and a few children have many seizures which are harder to control.
Most children are affected in the areas of comprehension or understanding. Many children become unable to understand their own name, and they are also likely to have difficulty recognizing environmental sounds such as the telephone ringing, making them appear to be deaf. The ability to speak is often seriously affected, with some children losing their speech completely. Rarely, a child may be able to understand language, but have difficulty with speaking. Behavioural problems are common, including hyper-activity, poor attention span, depression and irritability.
Some children have episodes of very abnormal autistic type behavior with symptoms such as avoidance of contact with family and friends, avoidance of eye contact common, extreme pickiness over food, very disturbed sleep, attacks of rage and aggression, insensitivity to pain, bizarre, inappropriate and repetitive play.
Other temporary neurological problems may occur, such as loss of bladder and bowel control, episodes of visual disturbances where the child can see but does not understand what he sees. He may have difficulty recognizing family and friends or common objects, such as food and clothes.
Landau Kleffner Syndrome begins commonly between 3 and 8 years of age, developing slowly over many months or suddenly overnight. When it develops in young children who have not yet learned to talk it may be mistaken for a developmental language disorder, deafness or autism. Seizures, and any other additional problems associated with this disorder usually settle down by early adolescence. Some children may recover their language fully, but many are left with a language disability.
Anti-epileptic drugs are used to treat seizures, but often do not settle the EEG brainwaves form in the long term. Steroids taken early enough and for long enough often improve the EEG and allow language to recover. For some children who do not respond to steroids a new brain-surgery procedure can be very successful.
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