Minnesota Epilepsy Group

Patients who experience seizures, including PNES, are usually advised to discontinue driving, or have their driving privileges revoked until a determined period of seizure-freedom is achieved. In this retrospective study, patients with PNES who requested driving privileges or reported having resumed driving were compared to those who did not on measures of depression, anxiety, PTSD, and cognitive flexibility/motor speed. DiagnosisofPNESwasconfirmedwithvideo-EEG.Demographicand clinical dataand requests for reinstatement of driving privileges (requiring 6 or more months seizure freedom) and reports of decisions to resume driving were noted. Tests of motor speed and hand eye coordination and self-report questionnaires of depression, anxiety and PTSD administered as part of neuropsychological assessment were analyzed. A total of 403 patients with PNES evaluated in 2010-2020 were identified. Of those, 365 patients were eligible for inclusion, and of those, 60 applied for driving privileges or reported that they resumed driving. When the two groups were compared, the group that applied for driving privileges or decided to resume driving was significantly less depressed (p=0.001) when tested than the group that did not. Furthermore, a significant difference was seen in measures of motor performance between those who requested to resume driving and those who did not (DKEFS T1, p=0.006, DKEFS T2, p=0.001, DKEFS T3, p=0.002, DKEFS T4, p=0.001; GPT dominant, p=0.05, GPT non-dominant, p=0.003). Driving a motor vehicle is a useful measure of improvement for PNES because patients with seizures are required to discontinue driving until seizure-freedom is achieved. This study revealed that lower levels of depression and better fine motor functioning were associated with reported seizure-freedom and driving resumption. Depression is commonly associated with diminished performance (slower motor response times and impaired fine motor movements) on tests of motor functioning, both of which may result in less interest in pursuing permission to resume driving. These findings suggest that mood symptoms (and associated performance on measures of motor speed and coordination) may have prognostic significance in patients diagnosed with PNES. This also suggests that timely treatment of depression in newly diagnosed patients with PNES may be indicated.

Seizure prediction and postictal recovery remain critical challenges in epilepsy care, particularly in real-world, resource-constrained settings. This survey presents a taxonomy-driven synthesis of 150+ peer-reviewed studies spanning seizure phase modeling, thalamic EEG biomarkers, edge inference, and clinical AI integration.We introduce an eight-axis framework covering neurophysiological foundations, machine learning advances, wearable inference pipelines, large language model (LLM) assistants, and privacy-preserving architectures. A key focus is the emerging role of thalamic stereo-EEG (sEEG) as a high-fidelity substrate for modeling seizure transitions and informing closed-loop interventions. Unlike prior reviews, this work explicitly unifies preictal and postictal phase dynamics with modern AI tools—such as federated learning, explainable deep learning, and agentic reasoning. We highlight gaps in dataset diversity, clinical interpretability, and cross-center generalization, while proposing a translational roadmap toward ethical, explainable, and deployment-ready seizure care.

Introdução: Uma ocorrência transitória de sinais e sintomas provocados por atividade neuronal anormal excessiva ou sincrônica no cérebro é conhecida como crise epiléptica. Quanto ao início, as crises podem ser classificadas como focais, generalizadas, desconhecidas ou inclassificáveis. Uma anormalidade estrutural subjacente pode causar convulsões focais no cérebro. Dentre estes, o lobo temporal é o mais prevalente, mas podem ocorrer alterações nos lobos frontal, occipital e parietal. Globalmente, cerca de 5 milhões de pessoas são diagnosticadas com epilepsia todos os anos. A incidência de epilepsia na população geral mundial está entre 0,5% e 1,5%. Objetivo: Contribuir para o conhecimento dos múltiplos sintomas de pacientes com crises do lobo parietal. Relato de Caso: Este relato de caso refere-se à aura parietal, diagnosticada no paciente J.F.R., homem, 48. O paciente relatou que sua primeira convulsão ocorreu em 2018. Ele narrou que ao se apresentar para uma reunião de trabalho percebeu um grande crescimento nas mãos associado a movimentos aleatórios ao redor da região cervical. Poucos minutos depois, iniciou crise focal com generalização secundária. Este fato sempre perseverou na fase prodrômica. O paciente relatou início crescente do quadro, levando a distúrbios significativos de imagem corporal. Um membro ou lado do corpo também pode parecer mais pesado, maior, ausente ou separado do resto do corpo. A convulsão do lobo parietal, embora rara, é responsável por cerca de 5% de todos os episódios vivenciados por pessoas com epilepsia. Estudos sugerem que a manifestação mais comum é a aura somatossensorial. Uma aura sensorial envolve uma sensação sem necessariamente apresentar um sinal clínico objetivo; apresenta-se de diversas formas, visual, auditiva, olfativa e epigástrica. Um diagnóstico diferencial seria psicose, pois o desenvolvimento de distúrbios neuropsicológicos também pode estar presente em pacientes com epilepsia. Portanto, sabe-se que há dificuldade em correlacionar a psicose como secundária à epilepsia. No caso em questão, o paciente está em acompanhamento neurológico e foi iniciado tratamento com Lamotrigina(50mg) e Quetiapina(25mg) durante a noite. Conclusão: É fundamental valorizar não só a queixa principal, mas todo o contexto psíquico e social, uma vez que podem afetar a qualidade de vida destes pacientes e integração no meio social.

Loneliness—the subjective experience of social isolation—is a common experience that can become an enduring feature of everyday life. How does feeling lonely relate to spending time alone? In this descriptive-exploratory study, we used the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR), a naturalistic observation tool that samples sounds from participants’ daily lives, to assess time spent alone as an index of social isolation. We combined data from three samples (N = 426) to examine the association between subjective and objectively-assessed isolation, and whether the association varies as a function of gender, marital status, and age. The constructs are weakly but significantly correlated, and spending more than 75% of time alone was associated with much higher loneliness scores, especially among older adults.

Given its centrality in scholarly and popular discourse, morality should be expected to figure prominently in everyday talk. We test this expectation by examining the frequency of moral content in three contexts, using three methods: (a) Participants’ subjective frequency estimates (N = 581); (b) Human content analysis of unobtrusively recorded in-person interactions (N = 542 participants; n = 50,961 observations); and (c) Computational content analysis of Facebook posts (N = 3822 participants; n = 111,886 observations). In their self-reports, participants estimated that 21.5% of their interactions touched on morality (Study 1), but objectively, only 4.7% of recorded conversational samples (Study 2) and 2.2% of Facebook posts (Study 3) contained moral content. Collectively, these findings suggest that morality may be far less prominent in everyday life than scholarly and popular discourse, and laypeople, presume.