Frontal lobe seizures

Your frontal lobes are involved with many different functions. These include: movement, emotions, memory, language, social behaviour and sexual behaviour. the frontal lobes are also considered to be home to your personality.

Symptoms of seizures in the frontal lobes

• Your head may turn to one side
• Your arms or hands may become stiff and drawn upwards
• You may make cycling movements with your legs and thrash your arms
• You may carry out strange and complicated body movements
• You may experience difficulty in talking or making people understand what you are saying
• Your sexual feelings and sexual behaviour can be affected. This may, or may not, be visible to an onlooker
• You may scream, swear or cry
• You may have jerking or trembling movements, which begin in one finger and then slowly move up to your whole hand and arm (this is called a 'Jacksonian' seizure and is usually very brief). Afterwards, you may experience a short period of muscle weakness.

Because some symptoms of frontal lobe seizures can appear quite dramatic and unusual to an onlooker, it is common for frontal lobe seizures to be wrongly diagnosed. This misdiagnosis could be as non-epileptic attacks, behaviour problems or, ocassionally, a psychiatric illness.

Loss of bladder and/or bowel control is more common in frontal lobe seizures than other partial seizures.

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