Psychopathology of Vestibular Aurae

Vertigo and disorders of equilibrium are well known as aurae in epileptic diseases, especially in the psychomotor type of seizures. Some aurae of complex-partial seizures represent brief paroxysmal schizophrenic episodes with cenesthesias and perception disturbances. An analysis of a large sample of inpatients diagnosed as epileptics with vestibular aurae demonstrated the presence of the constellation of symptoms known as ‘vertigo epileptica’ comprising cognitive disturbances, cenesthesias and vegetative disorders, the so-called ‘basic symptoms’ of schizophrenics in Huber’s sense, as well as their relationship to hallucinations and characteristic disorders of spatial orientation. The results highlight the pathogenetic relevance of the temporal lobe region and its associated limbic system for understanding schizophrenic disorders.