Abstracts

Rationale: Over more than 30 years, the portrayal of epileptic seizures and of people with epilepsy in the visual arts, literature, music and dance has been treated both in overviews and with reference to particular artworks. This topic has also been gathering interest in relation to TV and feature films, and by now the representation of epileptic seizures is considered to be fairly well-researched (1). Research on 'epilepsy in TV and feature films' published so far will be systematically summarized. Methods: All articles listed on PubMed in English, German, Italian, Spanish or French lpublished up to February 2016, which contained one or more of the search keywords 'seizure', 'epilepsy', 'epileptic', 'status epilepticus' as well as one or more of the keywords 'film', 'cinema', 'movie', 'motion' picture' and explicitly dealt with the relationship between TV or feature films and the condition of epilepsy. Documentary, educational, internet films or films on the theme of a filmmaker affected by epilepsy, were excluded. The publications were categorized as either 'film description', 'commentary', 'review' or 'systematic review'. A review was characterized as 'systematic' if it included a description of how the search for the reviewed films was carried out. The articles were then further examined in terms of their underlying thesis about epilepsy, number of films reviewed, the proportion of film material viewed, the methods used, the results and the authors' conclusions. Results: A total of 18 publications were found, 12 of which were published in English, four in Spanish, one in German and one in French. There were essays about individual films (n=3), four commentaries (n=4) and reviews (n=11, n=8 classified as systematic). The origin of the publications was Anglo-american (3 from UK, 7 from the USA), followed by Spain (n=4) and one from each of Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and India. Since 2010 the number of publications has increased. Only three research groups (e.g. 2,3,4) explicitly mentioned the film databases from which the film titles were gathered and the proportion of films having been watched by themselves. The subject of the investigation was either the idea that films reflect societal views on epilepsy (n=6), the possibility of influencing societal perceptions of epilepsy (n=5) due to is the wide distribution of films or further aspects (n=1, respectively) . The reviewers saw either a tendency towards improvement in the portrayal of epilepsy (n=2), or in a continuing tendency towards negative portrayals of epilepsy (n=7). Conclusions: The Anglo-American predominance is probably due to several factors, such as availability films and film databases of this region. The precise definition of an 'epilepsy' film remained often vague, probably due to the predominantly descriptive character of the reviews, and to inherently methodological difficulties (such as availability of films). The portrayal of epilepsy in film receives an increasing interest, probably due to more awareness concerning the interrelationship of media portrayal and public awareness concerning epilepsy. Interestingly, public health relevant aspects of epilepsy, such as status epilepticus or SUDEP have not been investigated en detail. Further methodological research on this topic is warranted to explore this complex interrelationship. (1) F. M. Wijdicks, Neurocinema: When Film Meets Neurology, CRC Press, USA, 2014 (2) Olivares-Romero J. [Epilepsy in films. A new century and the same old perspective?]. Rev Neurol. 2013 (3) Baxendale S. Epilepsy at the movies: possession to presidential assassination. Lancet Neurol. 2003 (4) Kerson TS, Kerson LA. Implacable images: why epileptiform events continue to be featured in film and television. Epileptic Disord 2006 Funding: No funding