Description
The field of epilepsy is broadening as the goal of therapy expands from seizure control to minimizing the full range of epilepsy’s negative medical and psychosocial consequences. Accordingly, in addition to determining seizure type and epilepsy syndrome and selecting appropriate antiseizure therapies, clinicians are increasingly taking the behavioral aspects of epilepsy into consideration in their evaluation and treatment of patients.
In recent years, psychiatric disorders have perhaps received the most attention among epilepsy-related behavioral conditions. Behavioral Aspects of Epilepsy: Principles and Practice builds on this widely recognized and studied group of comorbidities to encompass the complementary findings and insights of behavioral scientists from allied fields such as neuropsychiatry, neuropsychology, psychology, social science, and cognitive neuroscience.
This volume begins with the work of animal experimentalists and neurophysiologists. Their topics include the assessment of behavior in animal models of epilepsy, effects of environmental and social factors on the expression of seizures, animal models of mood disorders, cognitive and affec- Preface tive associations of seizures in young and mature animals, and neurophysiologic mechanisms underlying epilepsy and related behaviors.
Subsequent chapters highlight clinical topics across the age spectrum, including seizure-related behaviors, neuropsychologic function, interictal behavioral disorders, and effects of seizure therapies and epilepsy surgery on mood and cognition. The final section explores other disorders associated with epilepsy that have behavioral features, such as nonepileptic events, autism, and attention deficit disorder.
The editors and contributors have organized the topics in Behavioral Aspects of Epilepsy: Principles and Practice to emphasize the importance and interrelatedness of multiple perspectives from the laboratory to the clinic in understanding the behavioral aspects of epilepsy and translating research findings into clinical practice. We hope this integrative approach will bring us closer to the day that health care professionals can help their patients successfully overcome all of the debilitating consequences of epilepsy, thereby enabling them to achieve their full potential.