asked:
What is Epilepsy?
Epilepsy is the tendency of specific brain-cells to misfire. There are three distinctions of epilepsy to bear in mind in understanding this problem. The first distinction is that an epileptic episode is either partial or generalised. The second distinction is that an epileptic episode is either simple or complex. The third distinction is that epileptic seizures are either grand mal or petit mal. Confused? – Don’t worry, read on and it will all become clear.
Normally, brain cells fire according to their being excited beyond a certain threshold of stimulation, or they are restrained from firing because they are inhibited from doing so. Sometimes in epilepsy, these inhibition and excitation thresholds are not applied successfully, causing brain cells to misfire very easily. When this happens, two things can occur:
1.The misfiring may be limited to a specific area of the brain, causing a very specific response from the individual such as a short absence or a twitching of one limb. These are known as partial seizures.
2.The misfiring may form a chain reaction, which spreads to a larger area of the brain, causing a more generalised response from the brain. Adams & Victor (1981), successfully demonstrated this phenomenon by measuring seizure activity with electrodes placed inside patients’ brains.
Partial seizures can be further subdivided by our second distinction of simple and complex.
Simple, partial seizures bring about changes in the level of consciousness, but never involve a loss of consciousness, whereas complex partial seizures do involve a loss of consciousness.
Sometimes, if the focus of the epileptic activity is in one of the temporal lobes of the brain, the child may experience an aura prior to the attack. This ‘aura’ may be an experience of positive or negative emotions, it may be a hallucination of one or more sensory modality, or the aura may trigger memories or stereotypical movements.
We now come to our third distinction of seizure activity, grand mal and petit mal seizures. Sometimes during a more dramatic ‘complex partial’ seizure, the child’s body may rhythmically shake. This is known as a grand mal or tonic – clonic seizure. Although this looks dramatic, it is nothing to be alarmed about and is usually over within a few minutes as a combination of structures in the brain, collectively known as the diencephalon act to suppress the seizure activity.
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What is Epilepsy?
Epilepsy is the tendency of specific brain-cells to misfire. There are three distinctions of epilepsy to bear in mind in understanding this problem. The first distinction is that an epileptic episode is either partial or generalised. The second distinction is that an epileptic episode is either simple or complex. The third distinction is that epileptic seizures are either grand mal or petit mal. Confused? – Don’t worry, read on and it will all become clear.
Normally, brain cells fire according to their being excited beyond a certain threshold of stimulation, or they are restrained from firing because they are inhibited from doing so. Sometimes in epilepsy, these inhibition and excitation thresholds are not applied successfully, causing brain cells to misfire very easily. When this happens, two things can occur:
1.The misfiring may be limited to a specific area of the brain, causing a very specific response from the individual such as a short absence or a twitching of one limb. These are known as partial seizures.
2.The misfiring may form a chain reaction, which spreads to a larger area of the brain, causing a more generalised response from the brain. Adams & Victor (1981), successfully demonstrated this phenomenon by measuring seizure activity with electrodes placed inside patients’ brains.
Partial seizures can be further subdivided by our second distinction of simple and complex.
Simple, partial seizures bring about changes in the level of consciousness, but never involve a loss of consciousness, whereas complex partial seizures do involve a loss of consciousness.
Sometimes, if the focus of the epileptic activity is in one of the temporal lobes of the brain, the child may experience an aura prior to the attack. This ‘aura’ may be an experience of positive or negative emotions, it may be a hallucination of one or more sensory modality, or the aura may trigger memories or stereotypical movements.
We now come to our third distinction of seizure activity, grand mal and petit mal seizures. Sometimes during a more dramatic ‘complex partial’ seizure, the child’s body may rhythmically shake. This is known as a grand mal or tonic – clonic seizure. Although this looks dramatic, it is nothing to be alarmed about and is usually over within a few minutes as a combination of structures in the brain, collectively known as the diencephalon act to suppress the seizure activity.
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