Faculty Bibliography

Patients with epilepsy are at risk of traffic accidents when they have seizures while driving. However, driving is an essential part of normal daily life in many communities, and depriving patients of driving privileges can have profound consequences for their economic and social well-being. In the current study, we collected ictal performance data from a driving simulator and two other video games in patients undergoing continuous video/EEG monitoring. We captured 22 seizures in 13 patients and found that driving impairment during seizures differed in terms of both magnitude and character, depending on the seizure type. Our study documents the feasibility of a prospective study of driving and other behaviors during seizures through the use of computer-based tasks. This methodology may be applied to further describe differential driving impairment in specific types of seizures and to gain data on anatomical networks disrupted in seizures that impair consciousness and driving safety.

This report describes a 9-year-old child with status epilepticus and cat scratch disease. This patient's focal seizures and electroencephalographic changes persisted for 18 months after status epilepticus. This patient represents the third reported case of persistent focal seizures or electroencephalographic changes after status epilepticus secondary to cat scratch disease. This finding suggests that cat scratch encephalopathy may be a cause of localization-related epilepsy, and should be investigated when evaluating a patient with new-onset partial seizures.

Rats were exposed to daily, 3-h, fixed-time 1-min food-pellet delivery sessions, which is a procedure that produces overdrinking (schedule-induced polydipsia). In previous polydipsia studies, rats came to prefer solutions of drug or non-drug agents to concurrently presented water if the agents had first been offered in a glucose-saccharin vehicle that was slowly eliminated (faded), leaving a choice between a substance in water vehicle vs water. In the first experiment, a more rapid vehicle-fading procedure was used to produce a preference for 0.19mg/ml lidocaine to water. In the second experiment, the vehicle was abruptly changed to water, which also resulted in a strong preference for lidocaine solution, although the lidocaine solution volumes ingested for the final sessions were significantly less than in the first experiment. The results are consistent with a conditioned flavor/nutrient preference interpretation for the institution of the lidocaine preference in both experiments. Although flavor/nutrient conditioning can be a sufficient condition for generating a substance preference, a previous experiment showed that it was not a necessary condition.