Write An Essay On Epilepsy

Epilepsy is a disorder that anyone can get. Epilepsy happens in the AREGEF2 Gene, this can lead to a condition called Periventricular Heterotopia, in which brain cells, belong in the cortex are along the ventricles. Major causes that can lead to Epilepsy are head injuries or the disorder can get passed down through genetics. The symptoms of Epilepsy are: Whole body: Fainting or Fatigue, Muscular: Rhythmic muscle contractions, or muscle spasms, Sensory: Aura, or pins, and needles, Also common symptoms: Seizures, amnesia, anxiety, depression, headaches, sleepiness, staring spells, or temporary paralysis after a seizure.

Epilepsy is a brain disorder in which individuals have recurrent seizures. Seizures can occur in children and adults of any age. There are around 50 million people in the world who has the disorder. Individuals in developing countries are at a higher risk for developing the disorder. Seizures occur due to hyper-excitability and hyper-synchronization of neurons. Action potential transmits messages and it leads to depolarization. When neurons are uncontrollably depolarizes because of hyper-excitability due to too little inhibition, it cause a seizure. Seizures can last from a few seconds to a few minutes. As spontaneously they can develop is also as fast and spontaneous they can end.

Seizure disorders, according to the Mayo Clinic (2015), affect approximately 1 in 26 people in the United States. Persistent, or chronic, seizures result from a condition called epilepsy, a neurological disorder of the central nervous system. It can affect anyone regardless of age, but is more common during early childhood and after age 60. Given the number of people that seizure disorders, such as epilepsy, affect, it becomes helpful to gain a foundational understanding of the disease, including some of the causes, symptoms, and treatments available.

In the present time, the usage of 24-hour EEG video monitoring have proved many past physicians incorrect about their distinction between true and false seizures. EEG/video of pseudoseizures has revealed that urination, injury, and drug responsiveness may be part of nonepileptic episodes as well as epileptic episodes. As a result, EEG/video has become the gold standard for discriminating between epileptic and nonepileptic attack (Bergen, 154-155). Both clinical observation and EEG/video have reveal that long durations of start-stop pattern, direct actions, and situational triggers are more common in pseudoseizures than in true seizures (Bergen, 154-155). In addition true tonic-clonic seizures with combination of postictal oxygen debt, accumulation of saliva, and reduce level of consciousness are often followed by deep respirations and snoring or stertorous respiratory patterns, however, pseudoseizures lack these characteristics (Bergen, 154-155). The eyes remained open in every tonic-clonic and hypermotor seizures, but were closed in almost 90 percent of pseudoseizures (Bergen, 154-155). The result have shown that it is important to be able to differentiate between pseudoseizure and true seizure, but it is also crucial that physicians be able to find the underlying cause of the seizure as well.

On May 9th, 2014, I had an unexpected seizure in the middle of the night. At the time my parents were asleep, and they were awoken in a state of shock. Seizures are really scary because they are unexpected. As a matter of fact, the people who go through them are totally unaware of their surroundings and are left vulnerable to the dangers around them. Because of this drastic event, I had to go through many time-consuming tests, one of which was the EEG, which took one whole day and night at the hospital. An EEG is a very complex, expensive and time-consuming system, also it is uncomfortable for patients, especially for young children.

This paper is on epilepsy and seizures. The human brain is the source of all human epilepsy. (Steven C. Schachter, Patricia O. Shafer, Joseph I. Sirven, 2013) What is epilepsy? Epilepsy is sometimes referred to a seizure disorder, though not all seizures are related to epilepsy. According to the website Stony Brook Medicine, the reason a seizure occurs is because of an unexpected surge of electrical activity in the brain. (Stony Brook Medicine, 2014) Due to the overloading of electrical activity, it causes short-lived disturbance in the messaging system between the brain cells. The word epilepsy approaches from a Greek word 'epi' signifying 'upon or above' and the Greek word

There have been solutions that were introduced in the past and that are still used today to determine if a person has epilepsy. One of the solutions is called the electroencephalography (EEG), which was introduced in 1929 by the German psychiatrist Hans Berger (Jefferys, 2010). This was a breakthrough in psychiatric and neurological history. It was a minimally invasive diagnostic test that recorded the electrical patterns in a person’s brain. This allowed doctors to measure the electricity that the brain makes and to determine the brain’s activity. Overtime, it became popularly used during the late 1940s and early 1990s (Jefferys, 2010). This was the time when digital EEG recordings became available. Then, in the late 1990s, the digital recordings became faster, demonstrating the presence of ripples and fast ripples, which marked as epileptogenic zone (Jefferys, 2010). During an EEG, a patient would have tiny electrodes and wires attached to his/her head. The brain waves would be detected through the electrodes, which would then allow for the EEG machine to formulate the brain signals and record them on a paper or on a screen (“EEG,” 2016). An EEG is still used today. Another solution used to determine if a person has epilepsy is the patch-clamp technique. It was developed by Neher and Sakmann between the 1970s and 1980s. This method

Electroencephalogram (EEG) – an EEG records electrical activity OF the brains through electrodes affixed to the scalp. People infected with epilepsy frequently have variation in their brain waves, even when they are not having an attack.

Have had abnormal results from an electroencephalogram (EEG). This test measures electrical activity in the brain. An EEG can predict whether seizures will return (recur).

Each of the types also present different clinically. There are two main types of epilepsy. The first type is generalized epilepsy and is not tied to a specific area of the brain, and the second is focal or partial epilepsy which begins in a certain lobe and highly developed areas. Generalized epilepsy is then further broken down into idiopathic and symptomatic. During idiopathic seizures the cause of the episode is unknown, and the brain is behaving normally between seizures. Whereas, during symptomatic seizures there is a known cause of the seizure which is due to a structural brain abnormality (“Pediatric Epilepsy & Seizures”,

The topic to be researched is epilepsy. Epilepsy is a serious neurological disorder where the brain is prone to seizures. Seizures are caused by neurones in the brain receiving too much electrical activity. Recurring seizures are the only visible symptom of epilepsy. Epilepsy has 2 main types of seizures – generalised and partial. The type of seizure will depend on the brain area affected. Epilepsy is most commonly diagnosed during childhood – under the age of 15, and also during later stages of life – over the age of 65. Genetics can also play a part in some types of epilepsy, such as Lafora Progressive Myoclonic Epilepsy and Juvenile Myoclonic Epilepsy. As epilepsy is a disorder of the central nervous system it can affect the body in different

People uneducated about Epilepsy may have confused thoughts on what it really is. People have these "notions," which are partly or entirely not true. So, throughout this research paper, these notions will be proven untrue, mostly by factual information given by

Epilepsy is the word used to describe a tendency to episodes , in which a variety of clinical phenomena may occur , caused by abnormal electrical discharge in the brain, between which the patient is his normal self. Other causes include metabolic abnormalities , drug and structural brine disease such as tumor , encephalitis , infection or head injury . In many patients there is a combination of mechanisms seizures may be broadly classified as : partial seizures , generalized seizures , unclassified . (3)

Prediction of epileptic seizures at an early stage increases the effect of medication and more patients can be treated accordingly thus improving the quality of life of the patients. For the proper treatment, physicians need to know if and when the seizure occurs as many medical decisions depend on detailed information about the seizure type and its origin in the brain. Electroencephalogram (EEG) monitoring is the golden standard for the diagnosis of epilepsy. An EEG investigation provides the aforementioned information about the continuous unusual nerve cell activity in the brain and a detailed seizure characterization in order to resolve therapeutic options, particularly in the absence of a response to medication. During an EEG investigation, the physicians place electrodes on your scalp which sense and record the electrical motion taking place in your brain which is then examined to find unusual activity, which may signal epilepsy. The Fig-2 shows a typical EEG recording setup wherein the electrodes are placed on the

Epilepsy is a condition in which a person has two or more seizures affecting a variety of mental and physical functions. Epilepsy is one of the oldest conditions of the human race. Epilepsy Awareness is important because Epilepsy is a widely misunderstood disorder. The reason that Epilepsy has been misunderstood has been mainly due to research not being conducted until the middle of the nineteenth century. There are six main types of seizures and many treatments that can assist an epileptic patient. Many facts and myths exist about a person who has Epilepsy, which, is why it is an important disorder to understand. A person living with Epilepsy can typically have a normal life after seeking medical advice from doctors.