What It Is
Epilepsy is a chronic neurological condition characterized by a tendency to experience recurrent seizures, which result from sudden, abnormal bursts of electrical activity in the brain.
How It Develops
Normally, brain cells communicate through carefully regulated electrical signals. In epilepsy, this regulation is disrupted, allowing groups of brain cells to sometimes fire excessively and in an abnormally synchronized way, producing a seizure. Epilepsy can develop for many different reasons, including a prior brain injury, a structural abnormality in the brain, certain genetic factors, or, in a significant number of cases, no clearly identifiable cause at all.
General Symptoms
The specific symptoms of a seizure depend heavily on which part of the brain is affected, and can range from a brief lapse in awareness to more dramatic convulsive movements affecting the whole body. Some people experience warning sensations before a seizure begins, while for others, seizures occur without any preceding warning. Because epilepsy is defined by a tendency toward recurrent seizures, a diagnosis generally isn't made based on a single isolated seizure alone.
General Treatment Approaches
Treatment for epilepsy generally centers on medications aimed at reducing the frequency and severity of seizures, with many people achieving good seizure control through medication alone. For seizures that don't respond adequately to medication, other approaches may be considered, including specific dietary therapy or, in certain cases, surgical treatment aimed at the specific area of the brain involved.
Background
Epilepsy has been recognized and described throughout recorded medical history, though it was historically often misunderstood and misattributed to supernatural causes in many cultures for centuries. A more scientific understanding of epilepsy as a disorder of brain electrical activity developed considerably in the 19th and 20th centuries, aided significantly by the development of EEG, which allowed this abnormal electrical activity to be directly observed and studied for the first time.