Hot water epilepsy: a benign and unrecognized form.

Hot water epilepsy is a reflex epilepsy. Seizures are provoked by hot water, and result from the association of both cutaneous and heat stimuli. Described mainly in India and Japan, the condition seems to be rare in Europe, where it occurs in young children.

Epilepsies and video games: results of a multicentric study.

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to research whether or not video games may induce paroxysmal discharges (PD) in different groups of patients.

Methods: One hundred and fifteen subjects from 5 different French laboratories were studied: 33 had seizures exclusively under visual stimuli, 42 had both photogenic seizures and spontaneous seizures occuring independently, and 40 had non-photogenic seizures. The same protocol which included one TV sequence, 3 sequences of video games selected on particular criteria (pattern, luminosity and nature of the scene), were presented at different distances from the TV screen at 50 and 100 Hz.

[Generalized idiopathic epilepsy in older children and adolescents].

Generalized idiopathic epilepsies starting between 12 and 18 years of age are mostly represented by juvenile myoclonic epilepsy, juvenile absence epilepsy and grand-mal on awakening. The EEG and clinical description of the seizures, the different epileptic syndromes with their therapeutics, the prognosis and the familial forms with the molecular genetic aspects are studied. The importance of the history for the positive diagnosis is emphasized, in order to display the often overlooked myoclonies occurring in the morning.

[Electroencephalography, epilepsy and brain tumor].

The authors present a critical analysis of electroencephalographic (EEG) data recorded in children with supratentorial intracranial tumor. They emphasize the value of clinical and EEG presentation in the diagnosis of epileptogenic tumor in children and in the evolution of the children who underwent surgery.