[Epilepsy with affective symptomatology: three case reports].

Disagreeable affect of fear or anxiety can form the essential of the epileptic critical semiology. The centrum seat is most often found to be temporal and in some rare cases frontal. This form of epilepsy makes it sometimes difficult to establish a differential diagnosis specially when confronted with panic attack. A careful semiologic analysis is needful. Some clinical criteria are in favor of an epileptic etiology like the shortness of the crises, the stereotyped characteristic of the semiology or the association with some other epileptic symptoms. The assumption of neurophysiologic substratum common to both entities is put forward by the authors. Indeed, the current researches are moving towards the likelihood that the limbic structures are stimulated by the epileptic discharge. These structures are taking a part in the pathogeny of the anxiety troubles. Three clinical vignettes are illustrating the difficulties in diagnosing this form of epilepsy.