Differentiating an epileptic seizure from some other paroxysmal event is a common challenge in clinical practice. Many paroxysmal events mimic epileptic seizures and misdiagnosis can have disastrous consequences. Incorrectly identifying an event as an epileptic seizure can lead to unnecessary investigations and instigation of inappropriate treatment regimes. We report five patients referred to ...

Adenosine has long been considered an endogenous anti-epileptic compound. This concept was based on the widespread distribution of adenosine A1 receptors (A1R), which are mostly located in excitatory synapses; here, A1R inhibit glutamate release, decrease glutamatergic responsiveness and hyperpolarise neurons. However, the combined observation that synaptic A1R undergo desensitisation in chroni...

A Core Group of the Task Force on Classification and Terminology has evaluated the lists of epileptic seizure types and epilepsy syndromes approved by the General Assembly in Buenos Aires in 2001, and considered possible alternative systems of classification. No new classification has as yet been proposed. Because the 1981 classification of epileptic seizure types, and the 1989 classification o...

An index observation where a dog was trained to alert to, as well as respond to, human tonic-clonic seizures led to further research and refinement of training techniques. This was followed by anecdotal reports of pet dogs spontaneously anticipating human epileptic seizures. An industry has since developed training Seizure-Alert Dogs (SADs) to give humans warnings of their seizures. In some cas...

Epilepsy is a complex disease that evolves throughout patients’ lives. For many, seizure management requires escalation from single-drug therapy to multi-drug therapy, adjuvant placement of a vagal nerve stimulation (VNS), and ultimately surgical resection or laser-ablation of the epileptic focus [1]. However, if the seizure focus lies within a region of movement or speech eloquence, lesioning ...

Animal models of epilepsy have shown that synchronous burst firing is associated with epileptogenesis, yet the evidence from human studies linking neuronal synchrony and burst firing to epileptogenesis remains equivocal. Sleep-wake states have been shown to differentially modulate the generation of epileptiform EEG spikes between brain regions of greater and lesser seizure-generating potential,...