Introduction: The surgical treatment of refractory epilepsy represents a large step forward in the quality of life and survival of many patients, particularly for those whose pathology is located in the temporal lobe.
Aim: To concentrate the basic histological aspects of an extremely varied, although generally little known, genuinely neural pathology into one single review work.
Development: The causes of refractory epilepsy with a genuinely neurohistological foundation can be either malformative or neoplastic. The former include cortical dysplasias and hippocampal sclerosis, while the latter involve the so-called glioneuronal tumours (dysembryoplastic neuroepithelial tumour, ganglioglioma) and some glial cell-related tumours.
Conclusions: There is a group of disorders that are intrinsic to cerebral development and primary brain tumours which are closely related to epilepsy. Surgery applied to these processes cures epilepsy in a high percentage of cases that are resistant to pharmacological treatment.