Zimmerman, Burgemeister, and Putnam summarize in this paper a five-year study on the relation of epilepsy, intelligence, and personality makeup, using as their material three hundred case records from the Neurological Institute of the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, plus a small series of patients from Vanderbilt Clinic. Since man's mental functioning depends on the efficiency of his state of conscious awareness, the cases were broken down and divided according to the various clinical types of seizures, each type representing a different degree of impairment of conscious awareness. Objective psychological tests were performed, including intelligence and performance tests and Rorschachs, as well as clinical evaluations.

The studies show a definite correlation between the degree of disturbance of conscious awareness and the adequacy of mental functioning. Petit mal epilepsy, with its transitory lapses of consciousness and related mild clinical manifestations, shows the highest intelligence quotient and the least amount of personality