An extraordinary variety of experimental (e.g., flicker, magnetic fields) and clinical (epilepsy, migraine) conditions give rise to a surprisingly common set of elementary hallucinations, including spots, geometric patterns, and jagged lines, some of which also have color, depth, motion, and texture. Many of these simple hallucinations fall into a…

In the last article, the author covered the social and psychological causes to learning difficulty that can be created by epilepsy. Over the last two articles, the author gained a fairly complete picture of problems that may be due to the physical disorder of epilepsy and problems due to its unique impact on the social aspects of the classroom. In…

This article describes how an implantable device could greatly improve the quality of life for people with epilepsy. Gabe Anderson was diagnosed with bilateral heterotopia, a congenital condition that can lead to the onset of complex partial seizures stemming from both hemispheres of the brain. In early 2004, Gabe became one of the first 35…

Neuronal and nonneuronal plasticity are both affected by environmental and experiential factors. Remodeling of existing neurons induced by such factors has been observed throughout the brain, and includes alterations in dendritic field dimensions, synaptogenesis, and synaptic morphology. The brain loci affected by these plastic neuronal changes…

Both clinical and laboratory studies demonstrate that seizures early in life can result in permanent behavioral abnormalities and enhance epileptogenicity. Understanding the critical periods of vulnerability of the developing nervous system to seizure-induced changes may provide insights into parallel or divergent processes in the development of…