palangio is director of neurophysiology at the university of medical center at princeton and finally liza gundell is deputy director of a terriffic organization called epilepsy foundation of new jersey i want to thank you all for joining us doctor before you go any further and i'm fascinated to find out melissa's history and why she's doing so great right now what is epilepsy? so epilepsy is a disorder of dysfunctional circuits in the brain and basically you know to try to make it there's a lot of different types of epilepsy but in general it's abnormal electrical discharges from the brain that then manifest themselves in various sort of clinical ways and the thing maybe you can elaborate on that sure so essentially when we talk about epilepsy what we really have to talk about is seizures because epilepsy is really a disorder where you're predisposed to have seizures so seizures originate because the brain normally works through electrical impulses so whenever those electrical impulses can assert in particular part of the brain someone will have a seizure and that generally manifests in a variety