Sigmund Freud was the first to write about cerebral palsy as a nosographic category, uniting various infantile motor deficits of brain origin. He did not ascribe more than a temporary value to the term (infantile) cerebral palsy, but it has become--and still is--an indispensable part of the nosographic system. Nevertheless, it is still easier to explain what cerebral palsy is not than to define it precisely.

IntroductionThe frequency of seizures in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) ranges from 1.5% to 7.8% and is considerably more common than chance events. The etiopathogenesis of seizures in MS is still poorly understood.MethodA review of the literature on seizures and MS using PubMed.ResultsCortical gray matter involvement appears to be an all‐too‐common pathological finding in MS to play a primary role in the pathogenesis of seizures in MS patients. There is no clear relationship between seizures and the severity of MS. In approximately 10% of cases, a seizure is actually an initial neurological symptom of MS.ConclusionSearching for coherence in the occurrence of unprovoked seizures in MS directs attention to the dichotomy in MS pathology characterized by a complex intertwining of neuroinflammatory and neurodegenerative processes. The appearance (or nonappearance) of seizures in MS in relation to disease activity and disease progression indicates a distinct clinical phenotype of MS that opens up new perspectives in MS research.

Changes in the prevalence of cerebral palsy (CP) in a population of Slovenian children born between 1981 and 1990 were determined. A population‐based birth‐cohort study was undertaken. Seven hundred and sixty‐eight children with CP (aged 5 to 14 years) were identified from the National Cerebral Palsy Register in 1995. Spastic syndromes accounted for 84.8%. Of the 768 children studied, the total prevalence of CP per 1000 live births fell significantly from 3.3 in 1981 to 2.3 in 1990. This decreasing trend was observed in children born at <38 weeks of gestation and in those with a birthweight of <1500 g, but the prevalence of CP remained fairly constant in those born at ≥38 weeks of gestation and in those with a birthweight of ≥2500g. The results show that a statistically significant improvement in the survival rate of infants born in Slovenia between 1981 and 1990 was not accompanied by an increase in the prevalence of CP. Additionally, in the group of very‐low‐birthweight infants the prevalence of CP considerably decreased.

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