by Evander Lomke on
We hope all our readers will take note of this important meeting, of the American Epilepsy Society in San Diego, November 30 to December 4. November is National Epilepsy Awareness Month. There are 65 million people diagnosed with epilepsy throughout the world. Due to the stigma attached to the condition, it largely remains a so-called orphan disease. In forms of temporal-lobe epilepsy (TLE) for example, the boundary between emotional distress and structural abnormalities of the brain remains a conundrum for Western science. Today, there are unanswerable questions about the post-ictal (after-seizure) dimensions of personality and behavior. The EEG remains a significant diagnostic tool. But its interpretation, except for grosser abnormalities, remains imperfect, open to questioning, and thus more of an art. Ernst Rodin, M.D., is one of the premier readers of the electroencephalogram.