Epilepsy is a harmful and sometimes embarrassing disease of the brain. Sometimes conscious and sometimes not, epileptics have uncontrollable seizures of all types. In the United States, 3% of the population will have at least one seizure, excluding the 5% of children who have them because of elevated temperatures (1). 2.3 million Americans suffer from epilepsy and 180,000 new cases are diagnosed a year. (4).
History.
Hughlings Jackson believed that epilepsy was a grey matter disease and that seizures were responses to "exteroceptive phenomena-(7). In second century A.D., Galen wrote of the same causes. The physiologist Brown-Sequard basically said that the CNS had an elevated excitability. Finally, in the 20th century Italian physiologists experimented on animals to find neuronal irritability. In 1950, when few treatments were available for a disease they knew next to nothing about, Wilder Penfield discovered hie "Montreal Procedure- named after the location he was in. This procedure made him the first to use direct brain stimulation as a way of finding neurological damage during surgery. He also discovered a connection between temporal lobe epilepsy and experiences of heightened spirituality, maybe uncovering the biological reasoning behind some of the most famous visions reported such as Joan of Arc.
Neuropathology.
Epilepsy spurs from the cerebral cortex where the nerve cells disperse an uncontrollable electrical discharge. The cerebral cortex integrates higher mental function, the functions of the internal organs in the abdominal cavity, general movement, behavioral reactions, and perception. .
The main cause of epilepsy is unknown, but it can be found in 28% of partial epilepsy patients (1). A possible explanation of epileptic seizures is brain abnormalities in the cerebral cortex. This abnormality causes a group of nerve cells to activate concurrently, which cause an electrical burst that leads to seizures.
