Depth recorded limbic seizures and psychopathology.

Chronically performed stereotaxic depth recordings in medically intractable epileptics offer a unique chance to study the correlation of epileptic discharges with changes of higher mental functions as well as behavioral and emotional alterations. From a quantitative study using 213 complex partial seizures from 29 selected patients with partial drug resistant epilepsy and from the observation of other patients with well defined epileptic perturbations of the limbic system and related sensory brain areas a good correlation between ictal signs and chronotopographical seizure patterns was obtained. The special role of mesiobasal limbic structures, i.e., amygdala and hippocampus, and its connections to hypothalamic and frontobasal-cingulate areas is highlighted by tracing the seizures. It is concluded that besides the short-lived ictal abberations of mental state and emotional sphere ("psychical seizures") also some of the more prolonged behavior and personality changes seen frequently in patients with bitemporal basal spike foci might be attributed to narrowly confined limbic seizure discharges or to a "limbic dyscontrol syndrome" based on the altered activity of limbic structures due to the spike foci.