A seizure (from the Latin sacire, “to take possession of”) is a transient occurrence of signs or symptoms due to abnormal excessive or syn- chronous neuronal activity in the brain. Depending on the distribution of discharges, this abnormal brain activity can have various mani- festations, ranging from dramatic convulsive activity to experiential phenomena not readily discernible by an observer. Although a variety of factors influence the incidence and prevalence of seizures, ~5–10% of the population will have at least one seizure, with the highest incidence occurring in early childhood and late adulthood. The meaning of the term seizure needs to be carefully distinguished from that of epilepsy. Epilepsy describes a condition in which a person has a risk of recurrent seizures due to a chronic, underlying process. This definition implies that a person with a single seizure, or recur- rent seizures due to correctable or avoidable circumstances, does not necessarily have epilepsy (although a single seizure associated with particular clinical or electroencephalographic features may establish the diagnosis of epilepsy). Epilepsy refers to a clinical phenomenon rather than a single disease entity, because there are many forms and causes of epilepsy. However, among the many causes of epilepsy there are various epilepsy syndromes in which the clinical and pathologic char- acteristics are distinctive and suggest a specific underlying etiology