dhe at er6.rutgers.edu (David) writes:
>I got this information from a chapter by Vernon M. Neppe and Gary
>J. Tucker in _The American Psychiatric Press Textbook of
>Neuropsychiatry_ (second edition, 1992), and from Jeffrey L.
>Cummings' _Clinical Neuropsychiatry_ (1985).
...
>Reminder: I'm not an expert. There are probably places where this
>post should be corrected.
>--David
Good summary. There are seizures that aren't classed with epilepsy, such
as those due to metabolic problems (e.g., liver failure) or drug
reactions. There are some such as the febrile seizures of early
childhood that don't seem to repeat again (but which may have
implications for things like temporal lobe epilepsy developing later in
childhood).
The treatments are mostly medical (about 75% can be controlled)
though there is a substantial population which are surgical candidates
(both because of tumors and because of an epileptic focus in an area that
can be safely removed). George Ojemann and I just wrote a popular book
on brain mechanisms that uses an epilepsy operation as the focal point
for a tour of the brain. It's CONVERSATIONS WITH NEIL'S BRAIN: The
Neural Nature of Thought and Language (Addison-Wesley 1994) and the table
of contents and first chapter are available via Web browsers. Just point to
http://weber.u.washington.edu/wcalvin/bk7.html
William H. Calvin
University of Washington, NJ-15
Seattle WA 98195 USA
WCalvin at U.Washington.eduhttp://weber.u.washington.edu/wcalvin/
