Ictal Emotions Occurring in Temporal Lobe Dysfunction

As early as 1879 Jackson1,2described the feelings of fear associated with an epigastric aura. He felt that this emotion was an integrated part of an epileptic attack. Only during the past 20 years have neurologists and some psychiatrists paid further attention to certain emotional phenomena which may occur during an epileptic aura or (in combination with motor and/or sensory manifestations) during an epileptic discharge. Emotional phenomena may even be experienced as the only manifestations of clinical or subclinical epileptic seizures, or they may occur as a result of after-discharges following manifest seizures. Penfield and Jasper3have pointed out that patients afflicted with temporal lobe epilepsy are prone to experience "emotions." These authors even evoked emotional reactions, such as feelings of fear, fright, and terror—unrelated to environmental factors—by electrical stimulation of certain temporal lobe areas. "These emotions of fear are not simple fear that an attack is about