In light of the heterogeneity of epilepsy, both from a clinical and from an etiological perspective, it is difficult to establish a link between epilepsy and development that can be generalized to all infantile epilepsies. In general however, early-onset epilepsy has a poor developmental prognosis that is significantly linked to several parameters: age at first seizure, drug resistance, treatment, and etiology. This paper discusses the relationship between visible epilepsy parameters (those that allow the diagnosis of epilepsy) and neurodevelopment in infants, with special focus on Dravet syndrome and KCNQ2-related epilepsy, two common developmental and epileptic encephalopathies; and focal epilepsy caused by focal cortical dysplasia, which often begins during infancy. There are a number of reasons why it is difficult to dissect the relationship between seizures and their causes, and we suggest a conceptual model in which epilepsy is a neurodevelopmental disorder whose severity is determined by how the disease imprints itself on the developmental process rather than by the symptoms or etiology. The precocity of this developmental imprint may explain why treating seizures once they occur can have a very slight beneficial effect on development.
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