Epilepsy and Anxiety

Abstract

Although the affective and cognitive effects of seizures have long received attention, the anxiety spectrum of psychiatric complications of epilepsy has not been well-studied. Neither purely a mood, thought, or autonomic disorder, anxiety is a unique phenomenon in genesis and expression. Multidisciplinary efforts (neuroanatomy, neurochemistry, neuroendocrine, cognitive neuroscience, functional neuroimaging) are attempting to create a unified neuropsychiatric account of anxiety which, like epilepsy, can be regarded as a model phenomenon in the history of the relationship between neuroscience and mental illness. Comorbid anxiety and epilepsy offers a potentially rich nexus for theoretical and empiric investigation of the neurocircuitry and psychological mechanisms underlying each phenomenon.