Semiological Bridge between Psychiatry and Epilepsy

Epilepsy is a brain disorder characterized by an enduring predisposition of recurrent seizures. Seizure is a transient recurrent disturbance of behavior due to excessive or synchronous neuronal activity in the brain [1]. The behavioral disturbance in seizure involves disruption of one of four spheres that represents the semiology (phenomenology) of seizures. These spheres are the sensorial sphere, consciousness sphere, autonomic sphere and the motor sphere [2]. The behavioral disturbances in these four spheres may mimic psychiatric non epileptic phenomena in there semiology, that may lead to confusion in diagnosis whether the patient is epileptic or a psychiatric disorder. This mimicry occurs on three levels constituting a grey zone. The first level is the semiology itself, that the behavioral phenomenon at a time can be the presentation of an epileptic disorder and at another time a representation of a psychiatric disorder. The second level is the comorbidity between epilepsy and psychiatric disorders namely epileptic psychosis. The third level is the disorders of the brain that can present by both epileptic and/or psychiatric disorders e.g. NMDA encephalitis. Here we review these three levels of Semiological Bridge between psychiatry and epilepsy.