Juliana Gomez
Professor Swett
English 210
September 28, 2021
Is There a Correlation Between Prenatal Injury and Epilepsy?
In the article “Prenatal contributions to epilepsy: lessons from the bedside” by Mark S Scher informs the audience how children and adults can suffer from epileptic conditions that are prenatal in origin. The article is from a director of fetal and neonatal neurology programs. In which there is a group from the Pediatric Neurology University Hospitals Health System Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital that makes a report with the end of finding a correlation between prenatal injury and epilepsy later on. The author wrote this article with the purpose of informing the audience of the impacts of prenatal injury so the public could be more aware of how pregnant women are really being surrounded during their pregnancies.
In the beginning of this article, the author starts off by exposing that Most investigations have focused on the genetic origins of selected generalized and partial epilepsies. How many epileptic conditions are determined in many cases at conception. Lastly, how most of the severe “anomalies are structurally visible during the embryonic and fetal stages of brain development” (Scher Pg 1). This way of starting really made it easier for the audience to understand and already have an idea of how crucial prenatal injuries could be later on for any individual in their lives.
This article is sort of divided into sections so it’s easier for the author to get his point across. The way the author organized the article in this way really made it easier for the audience to take away some really key points on how prenatal injury really influences one individual later on and epileptic conditions. Some of these sections are prenatal considerations by the epilepsy consultant, maternal placental fetal diseases, genetic contributions to the developmental process of “nature-nurture-niche”, the concept of “nature-nurture-niche” helps define the epileptic condition. After the author stated those key points, the authors went a little more in depth for what each of those key points meant. For example, in this first section the authors mentioned 4 malformations that can be broadly classified to represent four general stages in brain development that are critical and if these were to be interrupted it could cause a later on epileptic condition. These are malformations due to abnormal neuronal and glial proliferation or apoptosis, abnormal neuronal migration, abnormal cortical organization and lastly one that is not otherwise specified. From this section the author starts off by some prenatal injuries which are to be known to be in one of these categories and that after could produce epileptic conditions. Later on the author moves on the “nature-nurture-niche” which are “three overlapping influences that form and remodel neurological structure and function, beginning during prenatal life, and continuing into childhood and adulthood” (Scher Pg 4). These two sections in the end flow well with each other because it shows how early prenatal injuries are very crucial to later on conditions in the individual.
In this article, the author is writing in a very formal, neutral and informative way about prenatal injury and how these will most likely have a later effect. The language and tone that the author used was very formal as well. Since this is a science related article the author also decided to include images. One of the images which was figure one showed an MRI of the brain of a two-day-old, full term neonate, documenting a right middle cerebral artery occlusion. The child presented with seizures in the absence of an accompanying encephalopathy. This image provided evidence of a baby who presented epileptic conditions because of malformation that must have happened in early stages of the pregnancy.
The rhetorical situation “Prenatal contributions to epilepsy: lessons from the bedside”,
takes into consideration who the audience is, the author, text, purpose and setting. The article has a range of readers, from experts in the field. First time mothers as well most likely. The genre was an informative article that contained information that supported the question if there is a correlation between prenatal injury and epilepsy later on in an individual’s life. The purpose once again was to show some more evidence on how crucial the early stages of an unborn child are. The author’s position was that there is a straight correlation between early prenatal injury and later on epileptic conditions. The language and tone that was used was very formal and neutral, constantly very informative. The language and tone was very neutral throughout the article since it was a very serious topic and with data. The medium Pediatric Neurology University Hospitals Health System Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital knew how critical this topic is and how these points needed to be exposed to understand and for the society to be more aware of early pregnancies and prenatal injuries.
Work Cited
