The Portuguese Society of Neurology granted the distinction of best scientific article published in 2018 in its official journal, to a paper with Joana Teixeira (Instituto de Ciências da Saúde, Universidade Católica Portuguesa) as main author, and Maria Emília Santos (Centro de Investigação Interdisciplinar em Saúde, Universidade Católica Portuguesa) and Paulo Oom (coordinator of the Paediatrics Service from Hospital Beatriz Ângelo – HBA ) as co-authors. The distinction was delivered on November 16, during the closing ceremony of the National Congress of Neurology, that took place in Coimbra. “Competences of language in children with Benign Infantile Epilepsy with Centrotemporal Spikes: preliminary data” is the title of the article , published in “Sinapse”, in November 2018. The article resulted from one of the studies developed by Joana Teixeira in several hospitals , including HBA, in the scope of her doctoral degree in Sciences of Cognition and Language, having Paulo Oom as mentor. There are presented the first results of a larger study destined to evaluate the competences of oral language of children with benign infantile epilepsy with centrotemporal spikes (BCECTS), in several areas of language. Among the main conclusions are: The results obtained indicate that children with BCECTS seem to show linguistic competences inferior to their peers in age, with higher incidence in the domain of semantics (identification of words of the same lexical field; words definition) and syntax (organization, expansion and sentence construction). Therefore, it is essential an early evaluation of the capacities of these children and an eventual therapeutic intervention, so as to minimize the impact of those alterations in their school performance and quality of life. “Language skills in children with Benign Childhood Epilepsy with Centro-Temporal Spikes: a preliminary study”
