Clinical article

AurAs (“breezes ” in Greek) have been defined as “that portion of the seizure which occurs before consciousness is lost and for which memory is re-tained afterwards.”10 Despite the frequency of auras, they are not included in the standard classification of epileptic seizures by the International League Against Epilepsy.9 However, in a recent International League Against Epi-lepsy commission report, distinct epileptic auras were categorized as the following: 1) epigastric; 2) fear and anxiety; 3) experiential (including déjà vu/jamais vu); 4) olfactory-gustatory (“uncinate fits”); 5) autonomous-vegetative; and 6) nonspecific.45 Relatively little information is available regarding the characteristics and surgical responsiveness of auras in patients with TLE undergoing epilepsy surgery.6,14,31 To address these issues, we analyzed aura semiology before and after surgery in a series of 182 patients un-dergoing temporal lobectomy for intractable epilepsy at our institution. In a subset of patients undergoing awake craniotomy, we were able to study whether the ability to reproduce an aura by intraoperative electrical stimula-tion relates to aura and/or seizure freedom following temporal lobectomy