While it is occurring, the person is completely unaware of his surroundings. It begins and ends suddenly. Infantile spasms occur in babies. They are clusters of brief jerking or jackknife movements. These happen when only part of the brain is affected, although they can spread to the whole brain and cause generalized tonic clonic seizures, described above.
People can feel unexplained pain, or fear, or anger.
A hand or leg may shake. People do not lose awareness, however. 750,000 of these are children under the age of 18. A large number of children and adults have undetected or untreated epilepsy. 20 percent of cases develop before the age of five.