Different forms of epilepsy exist. Those which strike children and teenagers have causes which are generally unknown. An important step has nevertheless just been taken in the understanding of the mechanisms responsible for triggering one amongst them: juvenile myoclonic epilepsy.

Formerly dubbed an impulsive seizure, or ‘impulsive petit mal epilepsy’, because of the spectacular nature of the myoclonic seizures it generates, juvenile myoclonic epilepsy (JME) remains striking because of the presence of generalized seizures still known as ‘grand mal epilepsy.’ Because here we really are talking about epilepsies in the plural form and not one epilepsy in the singular. ‘There exist some 120 epileptic syndromes,’ specifies Professor Thierry Grisar, ex-director of the ULg’s Centre for Cellular and Molecular Neurology Research (CNCM), which in 2009 became integrated within GIGA (the Interdisciplinary Group of Applied Genoproteomics) as a research unit on the theme of Neurosciences. ‘What these syndromes have in common,’ continues Thierry Grisar, ‘is the recurring appearance in the patients subject to such seizures of an abnormal behaviour, more or less visible or more or less discrete, at a given moment.’

Derived from the Greek term ‘epilambanenin’, which means ‘taken by surprise,’ and by extension ‘have fits, be in the grip of attacks,’ epileptic seizures were for a long time interpreted as the possession of the human body by various evil spirits or demons according to common beliefs, which could only be chased out through the intervention of a ‘minister of God’ thanks to the practice of exorcism. Nonetheless, Hippocrates, one of the great figures of the history of medicine and acknowledged as the first doctor to reject the superstitions and beliefs which attributed the causes of illnesses to divine or supernatural forces, already put epilepsies down to cerebral disturbances. But we had to wait until the 18th and 19th centuries of our era before this idea began to take root.