Class notes
Epilepsy Neuropsychology
- Institution
- University Of Cape Town (UCT)
Summary notes on Epilepsy Neuropsychology
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Epilepsy NeuropsychologyLecture 1
Definition
-CNS disorder or neurological disorder, marked by repeated seizures
-Has a high prevalence
-Seizures are brief episodes of abnormal electrical activity in the brain, lasts 1-5
minutes
-Brain functions by neurons sending messages to each other through rapid
exchange of electrical impulses across synapses-process underlines the process
of our thoughts and behaviours
-During a seizure, electrical activity is disturbed
-Abnormal electrical discharges can cause a variety of physical and mental
symptoms depending on where the seizure begins in the brain
-can occur frequently or infrequently, patients can have many seizures each hour
-During a seizure, abnormal activity can be localized to a very specific area of the
brain and disrupt functioning in just that area or can travel to other parts of the
brain-seizure propagation, can also involve the whole brain at once
-can cause pause in behaviour,loss of consciousness
Etiology
-Anyone can develop epilepsy
-Common onset: Early years of life, puberty and old age
-Numerous causes and some unknown-genetic disposition, tbi, infectious disease,
prenatal or perinatal injury, can be secondary to developmental disorders and
other conditions such as stroke
-Age of onset and duration of epilepsy is significant
Diagnosis
-Two seizures require investigation
-Referred to neurologist
-20-minute EEG-doesn’t always detect epilepsy, must have repeat EEG for a
diagnosis to be made overnight EEG, MRI in older adults
-abnormal brain waves common in epilepsy
Management
1
, -Anti-epileptic Drug Therapy (AED) therapy, one AED-mona therapy, then
increase the number of AED’s according to need, help to control seizures
-Childhood epilepsy don’t respond well to meds managed with diet below
-Ketogenic diet-low carbs high fat diet, ketosis occurs, body burns fat for energy,
thereby reducing blood sugar levels and insulin levels, state of ketosis can help
to reduce seizures
-Surgery-effective treatment, especially with temporal lobe epilepsy, seizure free
one year after operation, less expensive in the long run
Classification of Epilepsy
1) Focal onset seizures
-begin in one specific area of brain
-impair awareness, or awareness is retained, can be aware or lose awareness
●Motor symptoms
●Non-motor symptoms
Whether they begin secondarily generalised, then involving the whole brain
classifying them as secondarily generalised seizures
2) Generalised onset seizures
-involve whole brain at once
●Motor symptoms-classic tonic clonic seizure-falling to the ground and flexing and
contracting their muscles all over the body, tonic, clonic, myoclonic etc
●No motor symptoms-known as absent seizures, patient momentarily become frozen
and unresponsive for a brief amount of time, sometimes go unnoticed
3) Unknown onset
2
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