Epilepsy and verbal behaviour

A review is given on the various ways of influence between paroxysmal brain activity and verbal behaviour. In some cases the performance of specific linguistic tasks may precipitate an epileptic fit. Often epileptic discharges interfere with speaking, writing and/or understanding of speech or may result in palilalias, verbal automatisms or other forms of disturbance of verbal performance. A different but not uncommon aspect of epilepsy is hypergraphia. In some few cases even a speech deblocking effect of epileptic discharges has been observed.