epilepsy

Examples of epilepsy in the following topics:

• Other Neurological Disorders

  • Epilepsy and stroke are examples of neurological disorders that arise from malfunctions in the nervous system.
  • These include chronic pain conditions, cancers of the nervous system, epilepsy disorders, and stroke.
  • Epilepsy and stroke are discussed below.
  • While there are several different types of epilepsy, all are characterized by recurrent seizures.
  • Epilepsy itself can be a symptom of a brain injury, disease, or other illness.

• Brain: Cerebral Cortex and Brain Lobes

  • In fact, sometimes (very rarely) an entire hemisphere is removed to treat severe epilepsy.
  • In other surgeries to treat severe epilepsy, the corpus callosum is cut instead of removing an entire hemisphere.
  • The role of the hippocampus in memory was partially determined by studying one famous epileptic patient, HM, who had both sides of his hippocampus removed in an attempt to cure his epilepsy.

• Mapping the Primary Somatosensory Area

  • With his colleague, Herbert Jasper, he invented the Montreal procedure, in which he treated patients with severe epilepsy by destroying nerve cells in the brain where the seizures originated.
  • Along with Herbert Jasper, he published this landmark work in 1951 as Epilepsy and the Functional Anatomy of the Human Brain.

• Amnesia

  • H.M. developed pronounced anterograde amnesia after his hippocampus and amygdala were removed to treat severe epilepsy.

• Psychosurgery

  • Corpus callosotomy is a palliative surgical procedure for the treatment of seizures, as seen in epilepsy.

• Meningitis

  • Meningitis can lead to serious long-term consequences such as deafness, epilepsy, hydrocephalus, and cognitive deficits, especially if not treated quickly.

• Brain Imaging Techniques

  • Patients who suffer from epilepsy show an increase of the amplitude of firing visible on the EEG record.

• Anencephaly

  • It is known that women taking certain medications for epilepsy and women with insulin-dependent diabetes have a higher risk of having a child with a neural tube defect.

• Neural Correlates of Memory Consolidation

  • A famous case study that made this theory plausible is the story of a patient known as HM: After his hippocampus was removed in an effort to cure his epilepsy, he lost the ability to form memories.

• Neurodevelopmental Disorders: Autism and ADHD

  • Up to 30 percent of patients with ASD develop epilepsy.