[Motor seizure patterns: a comparative analysis of tonic, psychomotor and psychogenic seizures]

The motor patterns are self-regulating standardized movement models under normal and pathological conditions. Once learned and then automatized, they form the elements of the voluntary motor activity. Accordingly even the motor phenomena of epileptic seizures are defined as models or patterns. This paper is concerned with the question whether the epileptic patterns are to be associated to the neurophysiological regulatory processes of voluntary motoricity or whether these are pathological processes without relation to the physiological movement patterns. At the outset a short introduction to the neurophysiological basis of the voluntary motoricity is presented, which is built up according to the medullary organization of the cortex and taking into consideration the movement control through "feed forward" and "feed back". To the motor patterns of generalized tonic seizures connections to ontogenetic and phylogenetic old movement patterns and their activation through the epileptic excitation are denied. The tonic seizures are considered as pathological epileptic patterns, which are caused as a result of epileptic excitation, following their own dynamics. They represent a clear marking of maximum discharges of the cerebral structures, which control all other neuronal processes as well. The motor phenomena concerning the psychomotor seizures are described as specific patterns in respect of patients and types of seizures. To be differentiated are the elementary patterns of the first stage of seizures and the patterns of psychomotor twilight states. They represent denatured fragments of physiological motoricity and biological behavioural patterns. They would be brought in motion by the epileptic excitation, which in turn could lead to extensive motor phenomena.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)