New research linking developmental disorders with seizures

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Here is the link for a video about brain scans done on developmentally disabled children.

http://www.ted.com/talks/aditi_shankard ... rders.html

The scientist states that brain seizures were found to be the primary cause of developmental disorders with half of the children in this study.

What do you guys think? Do you think that this is groundbreaking research? Do you ever wonder if your autistic symptoms might be caused by seizures?

I'm officially diagnosed once with Asperger's and another time with PDD-NOS, but I think this might be relevant to my situation. I've had moments when people have said that I was staring at them without being aware of that. Also, I've woken up from sleep with hypnopompic hallucinations, along with the feeling of either paralysis, or my body shaking. (At the time I blamed it on the Clariton I was taking.) However, I don't have any hypersensitivity to bright or flashing lights, and I've never been in a coma.

If you respond to this thread, please see the video.

My GP and I talk about this stuff all the time. Right now I'm trying to get an EEG and an MRI because I suffer from chronic night terrors, and morning tremors. I don't think the research is that ground breaking unfortunately, they already have linked Autism to Epilepsy in the past. One of my friends has regular Autism, sever Epilepsy, and sleep disturbances. He's on lots of different meds. You're video represents to me that the way we diagnose neurological disorders in the future is not going to be as limited to hit and miss guessing, and more concrete testing will made available.

i really hate when people use the term "child" when speaking of PDDs and learning disorders when they should say "person" - the importance of the welfare of affected adults is completely omitted

in any case, this woman really only presents one case study of a child assumed to be autistic who was found to have a hidden brain seizure disorder and then responded to anti-seizure medication. otherwise she is somewhat vague with research results and it comes off a bit like an infomercial or a plea for support for further research. maybe i should have watched it twice before responding, as i've already forgotten a lot of what she said.

research into causation is good, so i am all for this brain scanning business insofar as the conclusions drawn from it are plausible. but i have concerns about accuracy and possible abuses.
this thread is relevant

Never knowingly had a seizure, so maybe I'm in the other half of the sample.

Though I do get "silent migraine" - just the visual aura part, with no headaches - and migraine and epilepsy have a lot in common.

I don't think it's all that groundbreaking but it does seem to make a good case for EEGs becoming standard in autism diagnosis. My daughter had one, lots of autistic kids have them. It's probably not a routine part of an autism diagnosis for everybody because doctors assume you can't make it past a certain age without it becoming apparent that you are having seizures. But maybe you can. And maybe EEGs should become more common.

But it did sound weirdly like an infomercial.

http://www.associatedconditionsofcerebr ... izure.html
http://www.associatedconditionsofcerebr ... /adhd.html
http://www.associatedconditionsofcerebralpalsy.com/

Uhh... how is this new? We already know seizures are ridiculously common among autistics. That they're the cause of autism, though, is not logical, because there are a great many autistics who do not have seizures or even abnormal EEGs; and those who do have seizures do not become non-autistic when their seizures are under control.

Could she be referring to Landau-Kleffner syndrome, maybe? That's not very common at all.

Is she talking about "pervasive developmental disorders" or "developmental disorders"? The second category is far more general.

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Epilepsy is real and there are many, many kinds of epilepsies - petit mal/absence/complex partial/TLE and so on.

There is a big problem with the notion that 50% of those with developmental disabilities - all their learning problems are due to some type of diagnosed/undiagnosed epilepsy (my view).

Using a word like epilepsy tends to trigger the idea of medicines for epilepsy - which are fine if one has epilepsy and one responds to an epilepsy med.

There is a big problem with implying a med for epilepsy can fix a developmental disability. A med for epilepsy can reduce seizures for some users but there is a lot of evidence that many of the standard epilepsy medicines can cause difficulties in the areas of paying attention and memory.

Some partial/complex partial seizures are known to be very difficult to treat with an epilepsy medicine - the med doesn't work or doesn't work well at all.

There are a number of challenges which are not epilepsy at all including: Tourette, ADHD, dyslexia, central auditory processing disorder (CAPD), prosopagnosia (face blindness), and so on.

Again, one has to be very careful at viewing a statement that 50% of developmental disabilities are due to epilepsy (my view).

There are large, national epilepsy organizations in all major countries of the world including the USA, the UK, Canada, etc.

There are books available about some of the unusual epilepsies (the non-convulsive epilepsies) such as the Nerves In Collision book by Walter C. Alvarez, M.D.

For some, are seizures a good answer to what's behind some learning challenges? Yes.

Are seizures a good answer to what's behind developmental disabilities in every single case? No.