Epilepsy: Definition, Causes, Diagnosis And Treatment
Of all the neurological diseases that can affect the human brain, few are as relevant as epilepsy.
It is a disorder that affects about 50 million people around the world. (according to WHO data), it is chronic and is also one of the brain diseases that produces the highest number of deaths. On the other hand, after strokes and dementia, epilepsy is the most common brain disease.
This is why many efforts are being made from both clinical psychology and neuroscience and psychiatry to understand what epilepsy is and how it acts.
The term epilepsy is used to designate a disorder in which Imbalances in the functioning of the brain cause so-called epileptic seizures to appear. These crises are episodes in which large groups of neurons begin to emit electrical discharges in an abnormal manner, causing the person to lose control of their actions and part or all of their consciousness.
Episodes of this type can last seconds or minutes, and appear unexpectedly regardless of the context in which the person finds themselves. Therefore, What triggers these crises has more to do with the internal dynamics of the functioning of the nervous system than with what is happening around the person. although one thing cannot be totally separated from the other.
Convulsions in epileptic seizures
In most cases, during epileptic seizures the person not only loses control over what they do, but also suffers seizures, that is, they many muscles in your body begin to contract and relax at the same time and repeatedly, causing tremors.
However, this is not a symptom that defines epilepsy in all its forms (because it can also occur without seizures appearing) nor does it have to do only with this disease, since it is possible to experience an episode of seizures with seizures without having epilepsy. .
Causes of this disorder
The causes of epilepsy are only known at a relatively superficial level. that is, it is only known that they occur when a large number of neurons begin to fire signals at the same time and in an abnormal manner, although the details of the biochemical processes that trigger this type of process are unknown.
That is why, more than knowing the reason for epileptic seizures, we know the as of them, which serves to describe them without going into detail. Among the factors that seem to be associated with the appearance of epilepsy are:
These are, therefore, problems that affect an individual brain, and not contagious diseases, from which it follows that epilepsy cannot be caught or be caught.
Furthermore, when considering the causes of epilepsy, it should be noted that Individual differences play a very important role in epilepsy since each brain is unique. In the same way, there is also great variability in the forms that epilepsy can take, a fact that gives rise to the debate as to whether there will not exist, rather than a disease called epilepsy, several types of epilepsy with little relation to each other.
How is epilepsy diagnosed?
Epilepsy is caused by an abnormal activation pattern of groups of neurons, and therefore to diagnose it we have to see, precisely, how the person’s brain works in real time. To achieve this, specialists in the field of neurology will use technologies for reading brain activity (such as encephalography or EEG) to see how certain parts of the brain are activated.
Since even in the case of experiencing epilepsy, brain activity can be apparently normal at times when epileptic seizures do not occur, In many cases it will be necessary to wear a device for a few days that will send signals about the neuronal activation patterns it detects.
In addition to this, the health examination may include many other tests, such as a lumbar puncture or blood and urine tests, depending on each case.
Possible treatments
As epilepsy is a neurological disease that affects all areas of a person’s life, It is very common for the treatments used against it to be invasive. In addition to psychotherapeutic care, they usually use treatments based on psychotropic drugs and other medicines.
On many occasions, after testing the effectiveness of anticonvulsants, surgery may be recommended to isolate or destroy the area of ​​the brain from which epileptic seizures are triggered, or to introduce a device called a Vagus Nerve Stimulator (VNS) into the brain. ) that reduces the frequency of seizures.
It should be kept in mind, however, that In many cases, epileptic seizures will never completely disappear. and only the intensity and frequency of epileptic seizures can be reduced.
