Antiepileptic drugs: review of safety of use during pregnancy

Anyone can become mentally literate, and if you enjoy reading, then the books Use Your Head by Tony Buzan and Accelerated Learning by Colin Rose are excellent starting points. If you prefer to learn by doing, there are many excellent workshops available on memory and learning. Some basic concepts which will help you on your journey are Learning Cycles, Learning Styles, Mind (Brain) States, Learning Rhythms, Multiple Intelligences, Competence Model, Brain Architecture, and Mind Mapping®.

Seeing, hearing and feeling simultaneously is the natural way to enhance memory and learning. In order to continually and effectively improve our minds we need first to become “mentally literate” a term first coined by Tony Buzan (and unfortunately not a skill taught in most schools). This is a literacy through which you come to understand your brain, and acquire the tools and techniques for learning.

Visual spatial skills

• David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel were two scientists who studied the electrical activity of neurones in the visual cortex of different animals.
• In particular, Mind Mapping® can engage both sides of the brain – simultaneously.
• This is different from the condition OCD, although potentially could lead to it over time, however we are unaware of any such recorded cases at present.

The studies contain limited numbers of exposed pregnancies and for the studies that suggest an increased risk it is considered that the results may be affected by confounding. Clinical studies examining the effect of polytherapy are more limited and are restricted to data from the UK Epilepsy and Pregnancy Registry and the Australian Pregnancy Registry, involving more than 300 exposed pregnancies. Non-clinical studies in the published scientific literature in rodents showed neurodegenerative changes in the cerebral cortex and hippocampus of fetuses exposed to gabapentin during early and mid-pregnancy (Prakash et al 2008 and Badawy et al 2019). However, limitations in the design of these studies make them insufficient to determine the effects of gabapentin on the developing nervous system. An unpublished Good Laboratory Practice compliant study in pregnant rats showed non-dose-related behavioural changes in the performance of the offspring during tests of activity and emotionality but the changes were not statistically significantly different from those of the control animals. Overall, the non-clinical data does not provide clear evidence that exposure to gabapentin during pregnancy adversely affects the development of the central nervous system.

Bipolar disorder

It was whether raw intelligence, as defined by a test, should outweigh empathy, preparation, or communication – the real skills of an effective educator. As CerebrumIQ reviews pile up online, many users comment not on the validity of the test’s logic puzzles or pattern recognition questions, but on the internal impact of their results.

National Institute for Health and Care Excellence

• Two smaller epidemiological studies (Hunt et al 2008 and Wade, 2015) did not show an increased relative risk of small for gestational age but these studies may not have been adequately powered to detect an increase in risk.
• The pioneering work of Howard Gardner and Daniel Goleman’s book Emotional Intelligence have hopefully finally debunked the idea that we all possess a single innate intelligence or “IQ”.
• About one-third of women with epilepsy are in the reproductive age group (Yerby 1994).
• NICE guidance recommends that topiramate can be used first line for myoclonic seizures and as adjunctive treatment in generalised tonic-clonic, myoclonic and focal seizures.
• This does not mean that everyone with ADHD has CVI, but some will, and we think it is worth checking.

With intellectual disabilities, the measure is against a person with typical intellect, which is measured with a test called the Intelligence Quotient (IQ). It is increasingly widely accepted that IQ is just one of many important measures of a person’s abilities, and does not include areas like social skills which are needed for development. Sometimes the term Intellectual Disability is used to mean a wider range of difficulties. Broader terms like Developmental Delay (above) may be used instead of Intellectual Disability. Global Developmental Delay (GDD)Where the term Global Developmental Delay is used, this means that the difficulties are across the whole of development.

These can have different causes, including a person’s genetics, a structural change in the brain, or as a result of other health conditions. The Triune Brain We have three-brains-in-one which represents an evolutionary inheritance. This controls our basic cerebrumiq instincts – breathing, heart rate, sense of territory. This controls our emotions, sexuality, sleep and immune system, and plays an important role in long term memory. This comprises a two-sided cerebrum the so-called left and right brain linked by a massive bundle of nerves, the corpus callosum, comprising some 200 million fibres.