Exposure of the brain to a stressful stimulus that is sub-threshold for permanent injury can temporarily protect against cell death during a subsequent and otherwise damaging insult. One or more brief, non-harmful seizure episode(s) (seizure preconditioning) can dramatically reduce hippocampal damage when given prior to status epilepticus (epileptic tolerance). We recently reported that status ...

This article outlines the consensus proposal on diagnosis of epilepsy in dogs by the International Veterinary Epilepsy Task Force. The aim of this consensus proposal is to improve consistency in the diagnosis of epilepsy in the clinical and research settings. The diagnostic approach to the patient presenting with a history of suspected epileptic seizures incorporates two fundamental steps: to e...

Several methods have been suggested to predict the onset of epileptic seizures from EEG data. We evaluated the performance of three predictions methods: the “dynamical similarity index”, the “effective correlation dimension” and an extended, prospective version of the “accumulated energy”. These prediction methods were applied on a large pool of intracranial EEG data from 21 patients. Altogethe...

Differentiating an epileptic seizure from some other paroxysmal event is a common challenge in clinical practice. Many paroxysmal events mimic epileptic seizures and misdiagnosis can have disastrous consequences. Incorrectly identifying an event as an epileptic seizure can lead to unnecessary investigations and instigation of inappropriate treatment regimes. We report five patients referred to ...

Adenosine has long been considered an endogenous anti-epileptic compound. This concept was based on the widespread distribution of adenosine A1 receptors (A1R), which are mostly located in excitatory synapses; here, A1R inhibit glutamate release, decrease glutamatergic responsiveness and hyperpolarise neurons. However, the combined observation that synaptic A1R undergo desensitisation in chroni...

A Core Group of the Task Force on Classification and Terminology has evaluated the lists of epileptic seizure types and epilepsy syndromes approved by the General Assembly in Buenos Aires in 2001, and considered possible alternative systems of classification. No new classification has as yet been proposed. Because the 1981 classification of epileptic seizure types, and the 1989 classification o...