Mens Health Blog. Medical Blog

Within society there are soapbox orators or fiery speakers who stand on street corners, trying to cause disturbances, urging people to “take action.” Most people walk by. Occasionally, some people stop, listen, and then walk on. Some of the audience may get excited, but action virtually never ensues; they don’t change their behavior and a demonstration does not begin. But on rare occasions, this fiery speaker arouses the surrounding crowd and a march or a demonstration occurs. It will not happen solely because he is an inspired speaker, but because of the interaction between the speaker and the audience. The interaction must be sufficient to rouse the crowd to action. In the brain tiny scars, or small abnormalities, are like the fiery speakers in a crowd. Usually this abnormal tissue causes no disruptions or change in brain function. Just as a crowd may pay no attention to a speaker, so the surrounding cells may fail to respond to the abnormality, and then nothing happens. Change in function, a seizure, requires the interaction of the abnormal area and the community.
This susceptibility of surrounding neurons is termed “threshold.” To understand a spike or a seizure, we must understand the level of arousal or “threshold” of the surrounding cells. If the brain’s threshold is lowered it is more susceptible to the effects of the “fiery speaker,” the scar, and a seizure is more likely to occur in the community of the brain. If the electrical activity from a scar interacts with mildly aroused surrounding cells, a local disturbance may appear as recurrent spikes on the EEG, but this is not a seizure. A seizure is a paroxysmal electrical discharge of neurons in the brain resulting in alteration of function or behavior.
*9\208\8*