Epilepsy Epilepsy is a disorder of the brain. For some reason, with epilepsy there is excessive electrical activity in nerve cells in the brain.
Epilepsy affects people of all ages, male and female.
It often begins in childhood or adolescence, and while the disorder tends to run in families, epilepsy is not contagious. The most common symptom is a seizure, of which there are many types. The type depends on the part of the brain the seizure starts in, how fast it takes place and how wide an area of the brain it involves. Involvement is confined to small areas of the brain with a partial seizure. These are also called absence or petite mal seizures.