Sorry to hear of your difficulties. The terms being used can be confusing but they all do have specific meanings.

A seizure is a symptoms of a neurological disorder and is caused by abnormal electrical discharges from the brain.  These may also be called epileptic seizures to stress the electical disturbance that underlies these.

Seizures can be broken into different types. There are 2 major groups of seizures - generalized and partial seizures. Generalized seizures mean the seizures come from deep areas of the brain and can affect both sides of the brain from the beginning. Partial seizures arise from one area of the brain and may stay in one area or spread to other places as well. Seizures can also be called by a another name, called an epilepsy syndrome. For example temporal lobe seizures are seizures that start in one area of the brain (temporal lobe) and may be associated with other things.

Nonepileptic seizures or events are episodes that may look like seizures but aren't caused by the electrical discharges. They may arise from heart rythm troubles, other medical causes or psychological reasons. The only way to know exactly what kind if seizures a person has to to record a person during a seizure - this is done by EEG telemetry.

Here are a few pages that will describe different types of seizures as well as different epilepsy syndromes. I hope this helps!

http://www.epilepsy.com/EPILEPSY/TYPES_SEIZURES

http://www.epilepsy.com/EPILEPSY/types_epilepsy

Epi_help

 Resource Specialist