A tonic-clonic seizure usually begins on both sides of the brain, but can start in one side and spread to the whole brain. A person loses consciousness, muscles stiffen, and jerking movements are seen. These types of seizures usually last 1 to 3 minutes and take longer for a person to recover.

Tonic-clonic seizures involve both tonic (stiffening) and clonic (twitching or jerking) phases of muscle activity. Tonic-clonic seizures may start with a simple partial seizure or aura. The person may experience changes in sensation, mood or emotion leading up to the tonic-clonic seizure.

Generalized Seizures

• Generalized seizures include absence, atonic, tonic, clonic, tonic-clonic, myoclonic, and febrile seizures.
• Loss of consciousness may be accompanied by spasms, stiffening, shaking, muscle contractions or loss of muscle tone.

Clonic seizures are characterized by repeated jerking movements of the arms and legs on one or both sides of the body, sometimes with numbness or tingling. If it is a focal (partial) seizure, the person may be aware of what’s happening. During a generalized seizure, the person may be unconscious.

It’s the type of seizure most people picture when they think about seizures. A grand mal seizure — also known as a generalized tonic-clonic seizure — is caused by abnormal electrical activity throughout the brain. Usually, a grand mal seizure is caused by epilepsy.

Clonic seizures consist of repeated jerking movements of the arms and legs, sometimes on both sides of the body. If the clonic seizure has a focal onset (starts in one part of the brain), the person may be aware during it.

Sometimes they can talk quite normally to other people during the seizure. And they can usually remember exactly what happened to them while it was going on. However, simple partial seizures can affect movement, emotion, sensations and feelings in unusual and sometimes even frightening ways.

Knowing what NOT to do is important for keeping a person safe during or after a seizure. Do not hold the person down or try to stop his or her movements. Do not put anything in the person’s mouth. This can injure teeth or the jaw.

Hold the person down or try to stop their movements. Put something in the person’s mouth (this can cause tooth or jaw injuries) Administer CPR or other mouth-to-mouth breathing during the seizure. Give the person food or water until they are alert again.

Call 911 or seek emergency medical help for seizures if: A seizure lasts more than five minutes. Someone experiences a seizure for the first time. Person remains unconsciousness after a seizure ends.

After the seizure: they may feel tired and want to sleep. It might be helpful to remind them where they are. stay with them until they recover and can safely return to what they had been doing before.

It’s not unusual for me to sleep for up to 3 days after a seizure.

As the seizure ends, the postictal phase occurs – this is the recovery period after the seizure. Some people recover immediately while others may take minutes to hours to feel like their usual self.

During the clonic phase, their muscles may twitch. Immediately after the seizure, it may be difficult to wake the person. Lack of sleep is a common seizure trigger among people with epilepsy, so nocturnal seizures that disrupt sleep may increase the risk of further seizures.

It’s believed that sleep seizures are triggered by changes in the electrical activity in your brain during certain stages of sleeping and waking. Most nocturnal seizures occur in stage 1 and stage 2, which are moments of lighter sleep. Nocturnal seizures can also occur upon waking.

In cases where the aura is a smell, some people are able to fight off seizures by sniffing a strong odor, such as garlic or roses. When the preliminary signs include depression, irritability, or headache, an extra dose of medication (with a doctor’s approval) may help prevent an attack.

Landau Kleffner syndrome (LKS) is a rare childhood disorder characterized by the loss of language comprehension (auditory verbal agnosia) and verbal expression (aphasia) in association with severely abnormal electroencephalographic (EEG) findings during sleep and clinical seizures in most patients.

A Jacksonian seizure is a type of focal partial seizure, also known as a simple partial seizure. This means the seizure is caused by unusual electrical activity that affects only a small area of the brain.

How is Landau-Kleffner syndrome treated?

1. Medications often used are steroids or a high dose diazepam at night.
2. Sometimes continous seizures in sleep persist despite medication.
3. Resective brain surgery is not usually an option.
4. Speech therapy should be started immediately in children with LKS.

Landau-Kleffner syndrome (LKS) is diagnosed based on clinical features and the results of an electroencephalogram (EEG). An EEG is a recording of the electrical activity of the brain, and this can be completed when a child is asleep or awake.

What causes Landau-Kleffner syndrome in a child? Researchers are still learning what causes LKS. It may be caused by changes (mutations) in genes, or by the effects of the environment on certain genes. In some cases, it may be caused by changes in a gene called GRIN2A.

The generalized tonic-clonic seizures begin between 5 and 40 years of age. In 8 out of 10 people, it starts in teens and young adults between the ages of 11 and 23 years old. A family history of epilepsy is common in 2 out of 10 people.

Benign rolandic epilepsy is characterized by twitching, numbness or tingling of the child’s face or tongue, and may interfere with speech and cause drooling. Seizures spread from one area of the brain and become generalized.

Progression: each type of epilepsy will have a particular evolution. For example, benign rolandic epilepsy will be outgrown by adolescence; juvenile myoclonic epilepsy is relatively easy to control with medication, however, without medication it will relapse and so on.

Doctors don’t know what causes benign rolandic epilepsy. Some kids with BREC may have a relative who also has epilepsy. Recently, several gene mutations were discovered in such families.

The need for medication is generally bigger if a child has frequent seizures, daytime seizures, cognitive problems, or a learning disorder. When BRE is treated, medications may include AEDs such as carbamazepine, gabapentin, levetiracetam, or others.

Benign Rolandic epilepsy (BRE) can start anywhere between the ages of 1 to 14 years. It peaks around 7 to 10 years when the majority of the cases occur. BRE occurs more often in boys than in girls with a 1.5 to 1 predominance. The incidence of BRE is 10 to 20 per 100,000 children up to age 15 years.

BRE is thought to be a genetic disorder because most affected individuals have a family history of epilepsy. Treatment for BRE may depend on the symptoms and severity in each person.

The name derives from the rolandic area of the brain, which is the part that controls movements. The term “benign” refers to the fact that most children outgrow these seizures by adolescence. The official modern name is “childhood epilepsy with centrotemporal spikes” or CECTS.