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Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences: CMLS logoLink to Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences: CMLS
. 2005 May 18;62(11):1177–1181. doi: 10.1007/s00018-005-5009-3

Dogma and dreams: experimental lessons for epilepsy mechanism chasers

C Bernard 1,
PMCID: PMC11139168  PMID: 15905965

Abstract.

Epilepsy mechanism chasers face one major difficulty. Since we don’t know how the normal brain works, we can’t start to understand how the diseased brain fails. Most of today’s hypotheses are based on what we think about ‘normal’ brain function, which may lead to misconceptions, as will be developed here. Furthermore, since there are many different types of epilepsies, some mechanisms may only be relevant to some epilepsies. Here, I shall focus on temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) the most common form of partial epilepsy in adults. TLE is often drug resistant, as are 30–40% of all forms of epilepsies. The failure of drug-treatments most likely reflects our lack of knowledge of the underlying mechanisms.

Key words. Epilepsy, GABA, interneuron, inhibition, excitation, hippocampus

Footnotes

Received 10 January 2005; received after revision 3 March 2005; accepted 23 March 2005


Articles from Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences: CMLS are provided here courtesy of Springer

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