Epilepsy – Scar Tissue

Transcript

What types of problems in the brain can cause seizures? And the answer is there’s a lot. First of all in adults, especially people over the age of 55 who develop seizures, the most common cause is a stroke. But really it’s not the stroke that causes the seizure. It’s the scar tissue that’s formed around there and the way that I tend to think of this is that any scar in the brain, the brain itself, every cell in the brain has a function. You know, the neurons function to make the brain work. But every other supporting cell has an important function to keep sort of the environment there just right so that your brain works well. When there is scar tissue that forms either from a stroke, from trauma, from a brain tumor, and that scar tissue changes that environment and the brain cells aren’t happier and can’t work as well. And that often, although not always, but that often can cause the cells to become prone to firing. And that misfiring is what ends up causing a seizure.