Ictal asystole is a rare occurrence for patients that have temporal lobe epilepsy. [1] It can often be identified by loss of muscle tone or the presence of bilateral asymmetric jerky limb movements during a seizure, although ECG monitoring is necessary to provide a firm result. [2] Ictal asystole and Ictal bradycardia can cause an epileptic patient to die suddenly. [3]
Hypergraphia is a behavioral condition characterized by the intense desire to write or draw. Forms of hypergraphia can vary in writing style and content. It is a symptom associated with temporal lobe changes in epilepsy and in Geschwind syndrome. Structures that may have an effect on hypergraphia when damaged due to temporal lobe epilepsy are the hippocampus and Wernicke's area. Aside from temporal lobe epilepsy, chemical causes may be responsible for inducing hypergraphia.
A headache is often present in patients with epilepsy. If the headache occurs in the vicinity of a seizure, it is defined as peri-ictal headache, which can occur either before (pre-ictal) or after (post-ictal) the seizure, to which the term ictal refers. An ictal headache itself may or may not be an epileptic manifestation. In the first case, it is defined as ictal epileptic headache or simply epileptic headache. It is a type of pain seizure that can remain isolated or be followed by other manifestations of the seizure. On the other hand, a ictal non-epileptic headache is a headache that occurs during a seizure but it is not due to an epileptic mechanism. When the headache does not occur in the vicinity of a seizure, it is defined as inter-ictal headache. In the case it's a disorder separate from epilepsy, it's a comorbidity.
An aura is a perceptual disturbance experienced by some with epilepsy or migraine. An epileptic aura is actually a minor seizure.
Psychogenic non-epileptic seizures (PNES), also referred to as pseudoseizures, non-epileptic attack disorder (NEAD), functional seizures, or dissociative seizures, are episodes resembling an epileptic seizure but without the characteristic electrical discharges associated with epilepsy. PNES fall under the category of disorders known as functional neurological disorders (FND) and are typically treated by psychologists or psychiatrists.
Frontal lobe epilepsy (FLE) is a neurological disorder that is characterized by brief, recurring seizures arising in the frontal lobes of the brain, that often occur during sleep. It is the second most common type of epilepsy after temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), and is related to the temporal form in that both forms are characterized by partial (focal) seizures.
Electrocorticography (ECoG), a type of intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG), is a type of electrophysiological monitoring that uses electrodes placed directly on the exposed surface of the brain to record electrical activity from the cerebral cortex. In contrast, conventional electroencephalography (EEG) electrodes monitor this activity from outside the skull. ECoG may be performed either in the operating room during surgery or outside of surgery. Because a craniotomy is required to implant the electrode grid, ECoG is an invasive procedure.
Sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP) is a fatal complication of epilepsy. It is defined as the sudden and unexpected, non-traumatic and non-drowning death of a person with epilepsy, without a toxicological or anatomical cause of death detected during the post-mortem examination.
Anterior temporal lobectomy (ATL) is the complete or partial removal of the anterior portion of the temporal lobe of the brain. The exact boundaries for removal can vary slightly in practice and between neurosurgeons. It is a treatment option for temporal lobe epilepsy for those in whom anticonvulsant medications do not control epileptic seizures, and who have frequent seizures, and who additionally qualify based on a WADA test to localize the dominant hemisphere for language module.
Abdominal epilepsy is a rare condition most frequently found in children, consisting of gastrointestinal disturbances caused by epileptiform seizure activity. Though a few cases of it have been reported in adults too. It has been described as a type of temporal lobe epilepsy. Responsiveness to anticonvulsants can aid in the diagnosis. Distinguishing features of abdominal epilepsy include (1) Abnormal laboratory, radiographic, and endoscopic findings revealing paroxysmal GI manifestations of unknown origin (2) CNS symptoms (3) Abnormal EEG. Most published medical literature dealing with abdominal epilepsy is in the form of individual case reports. A 2005 review article found a total of 36 cases described in the medical literature.
Epilepsy surgery involves a neurosurgical procedure where an area of the brain involved in seizures is either resected, ablated, disconnected or stimulated. The goal is to eliminate seizures or significantly reduce seizure burden. Approximately 60% of all people with epilepsy have focal epilepsy syndromes. In 15% to 20% of these patients, the condition is not adequately controlled with anticonvulsive drugs. Such patients are potential candidates for surgical epilepsy treatment.
Geschwind syndrome, also known as Gastaut–Geschwind syndrome, is a group of behavioral phenomena evident in some people with temporal lobe epilepsy. It is named for one of the first individuals to categorize the symptoms, Norman Geschwind, who published prolifically on the topic from 1973 to 1984. There is controversy surrounding whether it is a true neuropsychiatric disorder. Temporal lobe epilepsy causes chronic, mild, interictal changes in personality, which slowly intensify over time. Geschwind syndrome includes five primary changes: hypergraphia, hyperreligiosity, atypical sexuality, circumstantiality, and intensified mental life. Not all symptoms must be present for a diagnosis. Only some people with epilepsy or temporal lobe epilepsy show features of Geschwind syndrome.
Benign Rolandic epilepsy or self-limited epilepsy with centrotemporal spikes is the most common epilepsy syndrome in childhood. Most children will outgrow the syndrome, hence the label benign. The seizures, sometimes referred to as sylvian seizures, start around the central sulcus of the brain.
Transient epileptic amnesia (TEA) is a rare but probably underdiagnosed neurological condition which manifests as relatively brief and generally recurring episodes of amnesia caused by underlying temporal lobe epilepsy. Though descriptions of the condition are based on fewer than 100 cases published in the medical literature, and the largest single study to date included 50 people with TEA, TEA offers considerable theoretical significance as competing theories of human memory attempt to reconcile its implications.
Epilepsy is a neurological condition of recurrent episodes of unprovoked epileptic seizures. A seizure is an abnormal neuronal brain activity that can cause intellectual, emotional, and social consequences. Epilepsy affects children and adults of all ages and races, and is one of the most common neurological disorders of the nervous system. Epilepsy is more common among children than adults, affecting about 6 out of 1000 US children that are between the age of 0 to 5 years old. The epileptic seizures can be of different types depending on the part of the brain that was affected, seizures are classified in 2 main types partial seizure or generalized seizure.
Ictal bradycardia is when people with temporal lobe epilepsy experience bradycardia with their seizures. Bradycardia is defined by a slower than normal heart rate, less than 60 bpm..
Drug-resistant epilepsy (DRE), also known as refractory epilepsy, intractable epilepsy, or pharmacoresistant epilepsy, is diagnosed following a failure of adequate trials of two tolerated and appropriately chosen and used antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) to achieve sustained seizure freedom. The probability that the next medication will achieve seizure freedom drops with every failed AED. For example, after two failed AEDs, the probability that the third will achieve seizure freedom is around 4%. Drug-resistant epilepsy is commonly diagnosed after several years of uncontrolled seizures, however, in most cases, it is evident much earlier. Approximately 30% of people with epilepsy have a drug-resistant form.
Occipital epilepsy is a neurological disorder that arises from excessive neural activity in the occipital lobe of the brain that may or may not be symptomatic. Occipital lobe epilepsy is fairly rare, and may sometimes be misdiagnosed as migraine when symptomatic. Epileptic seizures are the result of synchronized neural activity that is excessive, and may stem from a failure of inhibitory neurons to regulate properly.
Hyperreligiosity is a psychiatric disturbance in which a person experiences intense religious beliefs or episodes that interfere with normal functioning. Hyperreligiosity generally includes abnormal beliefs and a focus on religious content or even atheistic content, which interferes with work and social functioning. Hyperreligiosity may occur in a variety of disorders including epilepsy, psychotic disorders and frontotemporal lobar degeneration. Hyperreligiosity is a symptom of Geschwind syndrome, which is associated with temporal lobe epilepsy.
Musicogenic epilepsy is a form of reflex epilepsy with seizures elicited by special stimuli.
Computational models in epilepsy mainly focus on describing an electrophysiological manifestation associated with epilepsy called seizures. For this purpose, computational neurosciences use differential equations to reproduce the temporal evolution of the signals recorded experimentally. A book published in 2008, Computational Neuroscience in Epilepsy. summarizes different works done up to this time. The goals of using its models are diverse, from prediction to comprehension of underlying mechanisms.