I'm glad you also mentioned circumstantial speech, fern. It's highly interesting how speech can be affected by various disorders. I know that bipolar disorder can sometimes (in severe episodes) share symptoms most often associated with schizophrenia. Catatonia, perseveration, and several others. Heck, I just googled the latter and that came up as a possible symptom of TLE. And likely others would, too.

Many people only think of epilepsy as including convulsions, but as we know, many with epilepsy don't have them. My mother did. Actually, I know very little about my mother's epilepsy experience other than her petit mal and grand mal seizures, that I saw and heard. She was quite tight lipped about it. But I've since learned more because of my own simple partial seizure diagnosis (in TLE realm), and hearing about the absence type, too. There are many types, aren't there?

I wish I knew more about the brain. All I know is what I read in my Intro to Psych class and through casual online research.