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Types of Seizures

Absence seizures:
What Absence Seizures (Petit-Mal) may look like:
¤ Staring blankly and unresponsive
¤ Look like the person is "Daydreaming" this can look like the person is smiling, crying, fearful or blank expression etc
¤ Fluttering of the eyes
¤ Lip smacking
¤ Make Jerking movements or repetive movement of the body or limbs
¤ Loss of conciousness

Complex Partial (Focal) Seizures:
¤ Feeling of aura sometimes come prior to this type of seizure as an indicator
¤ Smacking of the lips
¤ Making random noises (crying, screaming, moaning, laughing, repetitive speech)
¤ Moving your arms around
¤ Picking at clothes or fiddling with objects
¤ Removing clothing
¤ Head rolling
¤ Chewing or Swallowing
¤ Repetitve movement of the legs and/or arms as if a cycling or swimming motion
¤ Unresponsive during seizure

Myoclonic seizures:
Sudden Jerks or twitches in some or all of the body like an electric shock, they often occur after waking from sleep and the person can remain concious during the seizure. These types of seizures can occur in a variety of different epilepsy syndromes.

Tonic seizures:

Causes all the muscles in the body to suddenly become stiff like the first stage of a tonic-clonic seizure. If a tonic seizure occurs whilst awake it can make someone lose balance and fall over. The stiffness typically last for seconds to minutes but this can vary and usually a tonic seizure occurs during sleep.

Clonic seizures:

Causes the body to shake or jerk like a tonic-clonic seizure but stiffness in the body does not occur in a clonic seizure, typically this type of seizure lasts for a few minutes and loss of conciousness can occur. A clonic seizure can begin in one area of the brain (called focal motor) or affect both sides of the brain (called generalized clonic.)

Atonic seizures:

Causes all muscles in the body to suddenly relax which usually results in a person falling suddenly to the ground unless seated or laid down. Atonic seizures tend to be very brief and the person usually remains concious but this can vary. The head may drop and the eyelids may droop and they may drop anything they were holding.

Dravet Syndrome

Dravet syndrome is a rare, genetic epileptic encephalopathy that gives rise to seizures that don't respond well to seizure medications. It begins in the first year of life in an otherwise healthy infant. Infants have normal development when seizures begin. Yet as seizures continue, most children develop some level of developmental disability. By later childhood, most children also develop a crouched walk.

Seizures generally start within the first year of life. The first seizure often happens with a fever and may be a tonic clonic seizures and these seizures are often long and can result in status epilepticus, these seizures typically recur every few weeks in infancy and early childhood. Other seizure types have been seen in children with Dravet syndrome aswell.

Progressive Myoclonic Epilepsy

Progressive myoclonic epilepsy is rare and frequently results from hereditary metabolic disorders, such as neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis and mitochondrial encephalopathy. In addition to seizures, symptoms may include unsteadiness, muscle rigidity, and intellectual disability.

Reflex epilepsy 

Musicogenic epilepsy

Musicogenic epilepsy and musicogenic seizures: where by listening, playing, thinking or even dreaming of music it can induce or trigger a seizure or response. It can vary on the type of music such as: jazz, choral, classical, pop or particular instrument or even composer this can be due to frequencies that affect the brain. There can be a delay between musical stimulus and a seizure and the person can experience: distress, agitation, rapid heart beat, rapid breathing. Many cases of musicogenic epilepsy go undiagnosed and symptoms of seizures linked with musicogenic epilepsy go unnoticed due to the delay time of seizures and diagnoses of other forms of epilepsy.

Catamenial epilepsy