This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citing articles on ISI (1)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related articles  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Neurology  • Otolaryngology/ Head & Neck Surgery  • Balance Disorders  • Alert me on articles by topic

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

To the Editor: In his Clinical Crossroads article about temporal lobe epilepsy, Dr Devinsky¹ stated that Vincent van Gogh had this disease. Arenberg et al,² however, have previously argued that van Gogh in fact had Meniere disease.

In any event, the physician in this case assumed that the patient's complaints had either a psychiatric or neurological origin. I suggest they are primarily otologic. The main clue is the patient's ear noises. As I have previously argued,³ there have been no documented cases of tinnitus in patients with neurological disease but an intact cochlea. In contrast, Devinsky suggested that the patient's epilepsy, with its associated tinnitus, arose from head injury. It is not clear to me, however, which structural brain disorder could cause tinnitus in the right ear and white noise in the left without any associated neurological or radiological abnormality. Mild head trauma or closed decelerative injury can damage delicate . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Anthony G. Gordon, BSc(Psychol), DiplAudiol
London, England

RELATED ARTICLES

Temporal Lobe Epilepsy and Auditory Symptoms—Reply
Orrin Devinsky
JAMA. 2003;290(18):2407.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

A 48-Year-Old Man With Temporal Lobe Epilepsy and Psychiatric Illness
Orrin Devinsky
JAMA. 2003;290(3):381-392.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT