Focal Epilepsies of Nontemporal and Nonfrontal Origin

Abstract

Although neuroanatomists consider the fissure of Rolando to be the dividing line between the frontal and parietal lobes, the effects of cortical stimulation and of discrete excisions of the pre- and postcentral gyri are so different from the frontal cortex in front and the parietal cortex behind that we have considered the pre- and postcentral gyri to be a distinct anatomical and functional brain unit, the sensorimotor or central region. Thus the patients to be considered in this report are those whose epileptogenic cortex involved primarily the central or sensorimotor region, the parietal lobe behind the postcentral gyrus, and the occipital lobe (Table 1).