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Complex partial seizures often originate in the Temporal Lobe and were previously known as temporal lobe seizures. Complex Partial Seizures are often precipitated by an Aura , that may consist of varying things but often consists of a "burning smell" or a "fishy smell" where there is none. The patient may also experience, besides these olfactory Hallucinations , aural hallucinations - sounds may echo and become more loud or distorted, visual hallucinations auch as macropsia (things growing) and micropsia (things shrinking) and aphasia a sudden inability to speak. Throughout time, many great people in history have been diagnosed with Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (or TLE as it is often called by short-hand). Some of those people are Van Gogh , his friend and painter Gauguin, Socrates , Julius Caesar , Napoleon Bonaparte , Flaubert, Saint Paul the Apostle, Heracles, Joan of Arc and others, not to mention contemporary people who have Temporal Lobe Epilepsy. While origins of TLE may vary, it is often caused by mesia lesions in the brain, which are essentially a ridge of scar-like tissue in the brain. Like more generalized epilepsy, TLE is caused by a mis-firing of a synapse in the brain which causes a "storm like" reaction in the brain with bursts of electricity that can result in many changes in personality and physicality. There are many people with TLE who also suffer from full-blown tonic clonic (grand mal, convulsive, loss of consciousness) seizures as well as the complex partial seizures and petit mal absence seizures. There is also a risk, as with any epileptic, of status epilepticus (generalized seizures), which occur when a patient has back-to-back seizures that are unstoppable by the usual means. Status runs the risk of not only brain damage due to lack of oxygen getting to the brain as well as the seizures themselves and could lead to death if not treated or if treatment is uneffective. CREATIVITY & EPILEPSY Many have argued and continue to debate whether or not having Temporal Lobe Epilepsy is conducive to a greater or higher creativity or creative output. Certainly, there are factors that would lead one to believe that epilepsy could lead to a greater creative output (the need to write excessively -- or hypergraphia, which is a symptom of TLE) among other traits. Eve La Plante's book ''Seized'' was about epilepsy and the artistic temperament, and while an interesting book, it was by no means the only book in its class and there were other more scientific papers available online that made more convincing cases. Kay Redfield Jamison's book about her own and others' bipolar, manic depression (''An Unquiet Mind'') is more in line with what someone would expect for a book on this subject and, in fact, much of what Jamison writes could well be applied to TLE as well (not all, but a great deal of the material could be cross-applied, though note that the conditions are different in origin: that epilepsy is ''neurological'' and bipolar is ''psychological''). MAD GENIUS: THE DEBATE Others have written of a "Mad Genius" that accompanies epilepsy and has to do with a different way of seeing the world. Personified examples of this "mad genius" would be Van Gogh, Dostoevsky, Lewis Carroll, Tennyson, Poe, and others. Poe believed that genius and madness were connected to each other, but this was mainly in regards to Bipolar disorder patients. For more on this visit {Link without Title} REFERENCES Medline Plus: Partial complex seizure |
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