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Pathophysiological Study on Epileptogenic Focus
Author(s) -
Miyamoto Seiji,
Hara Yasuhito,
Tanikake Tatsuo,
Aoyama Nobufusa,
Hori Yutaka
Publication year - 1978
Publication title -
psychiatry and clinical neurosciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.609
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1440-1819
pISSN - 1323-1316
DOI - 10.1111/j.1440-1819.1978.tb02793.x
Subject(s) - neuroscience , pathophysiology , focus (optics) , psychology , epilepsy , medicine , pathology , physics , optics
We have studied traumatic epilepsy for many years. The authors were given an opportunity to discuss the problem concerning pathophysiological mechanism of epileptogenic focus at this meeting. For many years, epilepsy was often considered to be not a disease but a syndrome. We would like to regard it as a pathophysiological state rather than as a syndrome. If so, what sort of a pathophysiological state is it? As Jackson pointed out, it is a state of “occasional, sudden, excessive, rapid and localized focal discharge of gray matter”. To express this electroneurophysiologically, it is a state which often shows spike discharge on EEG. A follow-up study on traumatic epilepsy was performed by our research group, which revealed about 1.2% out of 4,000 cases of head injury in civil life. To make a diagnosis as “traumatic epilepsy”, the authors paid very careful attention to confirm whether these patients actually suffered from “epilepsy”, and to ascertain whether it followed head injury. According to our clinical experience, patients with a simple head injury and cerebral concussion (head injury Types I and 11 by Araki) did not reveal any epileptic symptoms, and also no focal abnormality was noted on EEG. From the viewpoint of clinical type of epilepsy, half of all the cases had partial but others were generalized