Neuropsychological profiles of children with aqueductal stenosis and spina bifida myelomeningocele

We compared neuropsychological profiles in children with shunted hydrocephalus secondary to aqueductal stenosis (AS), a rare form of congenital hydrocephalus, and spina bifida myelomeningocele (SBM), a common form of congenital hydrocephalus. Participants were 180 children with shunted hydrocephalus grouped according to etiology: SBM (n = 151), AS (n = 29), and typically developing (TD; n = 60) individuals. The group with AS performed below the TD group on all tasks except for reading, and their overall performance was higher than the group with SBM, who had the lowest performance in the sample. Both clinical groups significantly differed from the TD group on tasks of spatial function, concept formation, motor function, and memory. Performance of the subgroup of AS children with normal cerebellum status approximated that of the TD group, while those with cerebellar anomalies performed lower than others with AS. Cerebellar abnormalities (present in the whole SBM group and in a subset of the AD group) are associated with more compromise of cognitive as well as motor function.