What is a seizure "aura"?

What is a seizure "aura"?

Charles Ribak, Ph.D. (Professor of Anatomy and Neurobiology, UC Irvine School of Medicine) gives expert video advice on: What is a "photosensitivity" seizure trigger?; What is an "automatism"? and more...

With epilepsy, a seizure aura comes from the Latin term meaning breeze. Therefore a breeze or an aura is a signal that arises just prior to the actual onset of the seizure. The aura could be smelling some kind of smoke or burning food. This is one type of aura. Sometimes if you have an audiogenic kind of a seizure, you can hear a loud ringing bell, maybe a horn blowing. So, an aura is something that a person with epilepsy would commonly occur just prior to the onset of the epileptic seizure.