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To investigate the significance of EEG findings relating to the appearance of psychic symptoms in epileptic children, a clinicoelectroen-cephalographic study was undertaken on 15 cases with psychotic episodes. 1) Psychotic episodes with hallucination and/or illusion were observed, though rarely, in childhood epilepsy. These seemed liable to occur in temporal lobe epilepsy. 2) Three of four patients in the hallucination and illusion group showed frequent epileptic discharges. However, no distinct relation existed between seizure discharges and psychotic episodes. 3) Eight of 11 patients in the dysphoria and excitement group were secondary generalized epilepsy. 4) In the dysphoria and excitement group, psychotic episodes occurred either as a result of the increase in epileptic discharges or conversely as a result of the suppression of epileptic discharges. The former was more frequent. Epileptic discharges tended to be suppressed in the Lennox syndrome and allied conditions relating to psychotic episodes. 5) A forced normalization-like phenomenon mostly resulted from the marked suppression of diffuse slow spike-waves. However, a complete suppression of epileptic discharges was not always noted.

On the prevalence day, 2,378 epileptic children were identified. Therefore, the prevalence rate for epilepsy was 8.2 per 1,000. The lowest prevalence rate was 1.2 in children under one year of age, and the highest was 11.0 at five years of age. The rate was higher for males than females. The annual incidence rate for epilepsy was estimated at 145.0 per 100,000 for 1975. The onset of seizures was high in the first three years, totaling 1,795 cases (77.7%), and this decreased after four years of age. Primary generalized epilepsy was found in 577 cases (31.7%), secondary generalized epilepsy in 167 (9.2%), partial epilepsy with elementary symptomatology in 205 (11.3%), with complex symptomatology in 61 (3.3%) and partial seizures secondarily generalized in 801 (44.5%). The study on such a number of cases had hitherto never been reported in the world.

A longitudinal clinico-electroencephalographic study was conducted on 484 cases of age-dependent epileptic encephalopathy; early-infantile epileptic encephalopathy with suppression-burst (Ohtahara) (EIEE), the West and Lennox syndromes. 1) The three types had the same kind of etiologic heterogeneity. 2) An evolutional change with age was noted from EIEE to the West and from the West to the Lennox syndromes, with the change from suppression-burst to hypsarhythmia, and from hypsarhythmia to the diffuse slow spike-waves. 3) The core ictal EEG pattern of tonic spasms was the desynchronization in EIEE and the West syndrome, with the rapid synchronization and recruiting rhythm in the Lennox syndrome. In the same cases, the changes from desynchronization to hypersynchronization were observed with age. These facts suggest that the three syndromes are based on the same pathophysiology, strongly related to the subcortical mechanism, and that their clinico-electrical manifestations are modified by the degree of brain maturation.