Epilepsy and Auras

Epilepsy is a group of disorders that are neurologically-related that involve reoccuring seizures. These seizures result from unnormal or excessive neuronal activity in the brain.

It is common for people with epilepsy to have a certain sensaton before a seizure called an aura. This aura is actually a simple partial seizure, which are smaller seizures that only affect a small portion of the brain. These occur as a warning system, so that the person will have time to lay down or get out of a situation that would be dangerous if a seizure were to take place. There are different types of auras, depending on the person; some auras can be a change in body temperature, a tense or anxious feeling, a particular taste or smell, and sometimes, it can even be a particular sight or sound. Sometimes it can be a sense of heaviness or a feeling of depression. Not all auras are followed by a tonic clonic seizure (a seizure affecting the whole brain), but if it does, it is called a secondary generalised seizure. Sometimes this aura can last several hours or days.

For me, it was a feeling of weird déjà vu feeling that made me feel sick. It is hard to describe, but sometimes I would just feel like I had done whatever I was doing before, and then I just felt like I had something incredibly heavy in my stomach. This feeling for me didn't last long, it resulted in my tiredness and it just made me sleepy.

The type of epilepsy I had was called benign rolandic epilepsy, which is a condition where the most abnormal activity occurs at night, and in most cases, it is only a childhood condition, where the children outgrow it around the age 14-18. In benign rolandic epilepsy, the seizures start around the central sulcus (centrotemporal area) of the brain which is located around the Rolandic fissure.

Central Sulcus:



Epilepsy can affect many different areas of life (seeing as how the brain controls everything that's obvious!). From standard tests, 29% of people with epilepsy suffer from a major depressive disorder. About half the time, these conditions go untreated.

Epilepsy can be treated with drugs that suppress the activity of the neurons causing the seizures, and when neurons remain inactive for long periods of time, then they eventually stop working altogether. The agreed length of time to be on medicine treating the epilepsy is 1-2 years.

URL:
http://www.epilepsyfoundation.org/answerplace/Medical/related/Depression/epilepsy.cfm
http://www.epilepsy.org.uk/info/aura.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epilepsy