Aura's

A specific sensation before the attack

young children

elderly

Partial-- impaired or no loss of consciousness

Generalized-- complete loss of consciousness

Seizure focus (small group of neurons at a certain part of the brain)

Foci

less than 2 minutes

Simple

Complex

1. Motor = changes its activity

2. Sensory = Causes perceptual changes

3. Autonomic = Changes in autonomic control organs

4. Psychic = changes how they think, feel or experience things (emotional state)

Consciousness

Short-term memory

Temporal

Frontal

Nonevolving

Evolving

Secondarily Generalized Seizures

or

Jacksonian March for the guy who discovered it

Synchronousy

whole brain-- in both hemispheres

Convulsive

Nonconvulsive

Increase

Muscle tone

Repetitive

Muscle contraction and Relaxation

1. Simple/Typical Absense Seizure

2. Tonic Seizure

3. Clonic Seizure

4. Tonic-Clonic Seizure

5. Complex Absense Seizure

6. Myoclonic Seizure

7. Atypical Absense Seizure

8. Atonic Seizure

They are aka petit mal

Have brief staring spells

Last <10 secs, but can be as long as 20 secs

Begin and end abruptly

Awareness and responsiveness during the seizure is impaired

Patients are not aware that they had one

Share the same features as simple absense but involve muscle activity.

People tend to Blink the eyes, move the mouth as if tasting something, rub hands and minor contractions of muscles.

They generally last longer than 10 secs.

They last longer, could be as long as 30 secs.

Begin and end gradually; not abruptly

It leaves the patient more aware of events during the seizure.

More likely to be associated with low IQ and can persist throughtout life.

Jerks

muscle or muscle groups

1-2 seconds

both sides of the body simultaneously

Aka Akinectic, falling or drop seizures

Last <15 secs

Patient remains conscious

Body can get bruised or head injury due to falling

Often last into adulthood

Muscle tone

stiffening movements of the body

last <20 secs

Conscious

Occurs most often during sleep

Involves most or all of the brain

Tonic-Clonic

or aka

Grand Mal

Last about 2-3 mins

Consciousness is lost and slow to return

After seizure patient may be very sleepy, agitated, confused or depressed.

Objectiven (a 3rd party can observe it)

Subjective (only the patient can feel/see it)

Type of seizures observed

age of onset

Cause of seizure

area of brain involved

factors that promote the seizure

severity, frequency and time of seizures

EEG patterns

They are tonic- clonic seizures that occur in kids between 3 months - 5 yrs

Have a high fever with a seizure

occurs in 2-5 % of all children

Tends to run in family

Fever reduction does not prevent seizures

This syndrome is simple absense seizures ocuring in kids 4-8 yrs old that is often started due to exercise.

It accounts for 2-8% of all patients with epilepsy.

Primary cause is due to genetics

Usually grow out of it in adulthood

Occurs in juveniles

Usually observed in the early morning or shortly after waking up.

Is the most common forms of epilepsy makes up 7% of all cases. 

More common in peeps who have family with some form of generalized epilepsy.

Seizures are started due to strobe lights, TVs, video games, etc.

Simple and Complex partial seizures

Secondarily generalized seizures

Can be symptomatic or Idiopathic.

Some causes for Symptomatic Epilepsies are:

head trauma, drugs, infection, stroke, tumors

Idiopathic is unknown causes. It is probably due to genetics

The amygdala

Anterior hippocampus

entorhinal cortex

High freq

Low amp

Increases

decreases

(amp and freq are inverse of each other)

4-30 Hz

20-100 microVolts

The time scale is very slow and amplitudes are very low.

Data represent a population of neuorns, not 1.

Spikes in the EEG should not be confused for an A.P in a neuron.

Excitatory or Inhibitory events cannot be determined soley by this.

1

all

Paroxysmal Depolarizing Shift (PDS).

PDS is D.P followed by H.P

Activation of Glu receptros

and Voltage gated Ca2+ channels.

Activation of GABA receptors

and

Ca2+ activated K+ channels

1. A large (20-40 mV), and long lasting (50-200 msec) suprathreshold D.P.

2. Afterhyperpolarization

If cells a and b have a recurrent excitatory connection to each other and if input of an excitatory to either of a or b will excite both and thus inhibit cells c and d because they are inbited when a or b are activated.

(feedback inhibition)

They have large amplitude spike waves that occur at 3 Hz.

This is similar to sleep spindles but have a way higher amplitude.

This observation lead to the centrencepalic hypothesis.

Cortical pyramidal neurons

Thalamic Relay neurons