I diopathic epilepsies have a genetic basis and are characterised by the absence of an overt underlying neurological abnormality. Most idiopathic epilepsies are complex diseases with considerable clinical and genetic heterogeneity and an unclear inheritance pattern because of genetic and environmental factors. Families in which the disease segregates as an autosomal dominant trait with reduced ...

Regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) measurements were determined by the intravenous Xenon 133 technique in 80 patients suffering from temporal lobe epilepsy. All the patients had a normal CT scan. Three subgroups were differentiated, according to EEG and all-night polygraphic recordings: temporal lobe epilepsy with left (N = 25) or right (N = 25) EEG epileptic abnormalities and temporal lobe ep...

Microglia are the resident immune cells in the brain that constitute the brain's innate immune system. Recent studies have revealed various functions of microglia in the development and maintenance of the central nervous system (CNS) in both health and disease. However, the role of microglia in epilepsy remains largely undiscovered, partly because of the complex phenotypes of activated microgli...

PURPOSE The epilepsy associated with hypothalamic hamartomas (HHs) has typical clinical, electrophysiologic, and behavioral manifestations refractory to drug therapy and with unfavorable evolution. It is well known that only sessile lesions produce epilepsy, but no correlation has been established between the different types of sessile hamartomas and the diverse manifestations of the epilepsy. ...

Epilepsy is a common neurological disorder with an incidence of approximately 0.5%. In order to develop better strategies for treatment of epilepsy, more insight on the etiology and pathogenesis of epilepsy is required. In 2001, based on the diagnostic scheme of the International League Against Epilepsy, three new forms of familial epilepsy were identified. These include familial temporal lobe ...

PURPOSE Ictal spitting is rarely reported in patients with epilepsy. More often it is observed in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) and is presumed to be a lateralizing sign to language nondominant hemisphere. We report three patients with left TLE who had ictal spitting registered during prolonged video-EEG monitoring. METHODS Medical charts of all patients with medically refractory...

PURPOSE Defining prognostic factors for neocortical epilepsy surgery is important for the identification of ideal candidates and for predicting the prognosis of individual patients. We use multivariate analysis to identify favorable prognostic factors for neocortical epilepsy surgery. METHODS One hundred ninety-three neocortical epilepsy patients, including 91 without focal lesions on MRI, we...

The search for a special neuropsychological profile of frontal lobe epilepsy subjects (FLE) has so far led to inconclusive results. In this paper we compared the preoperative neuropsychological performance of FLE and temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) subjects. We further investigated whether frontal lobe lesions of epileptogenic cause produce the same type of cognitive dysfunction as do tumours of t...