Electrical Seizure Discharges Within the Human Brain: The Problem of Spread

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the electrical seizure discharges within the human brain. A crucial element in the dysfunction of the epileptic brain can be abnormal synaptic input. The chapter presents a method to detect the source that drives the spread of abnormal discharges with the brain. As the speed of spread is too rapid for the eye to follow, a computer program is used that can make these measurements in milliseconds. Recordings are made simultaneously from many pairs of electrodes linked to give information from deep sites and from surface electrodes on the dura. The exact number in each case is decided by the clinical problem; however, it usually amounts to 24. Both the epileptic discharge and the artificial bombardment by an electrical stimulus send impulses by pathways mediated by abnormal synaptic inputs. The three main routes pertinent to temporal lobe epilepsy, each of which is searched for in the analyses of the patients' seizure activities are the anterior commissure, the psalterium, and the corpus callosum.

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