What exactly is different in the brain of an epileptic person versus the brain of a non-epileptic person?
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Seizure = part of the brain decides it’s party time and goes mental by firing off neurones quickly and inappropriately 🪩 if it is the typical seizure people think of (unconscious and flipping about on the floor, a tonic-clinic generalised seizure) it means that the areas next to party central (the part of the brain where the abnormal triggering is happening) has joined in and it starts doing the same, then it spreads throughout the brain.
Epilepsy is a tendency towards having seizures for various reasons (many don’t have an identifiable reason). Everyone has the potential to have a seizure in the right (or probably better to say the wrong) conditions. But some people, that threshold is lower, and they can develop seizures from identifiable triggers (stress, sleep deprivation, flickering lights).
Putting it as what is the difference in an epileptic brain vs a non-epileptic brain is probably a bit too simple, as there will be lots of different variations in the brain that cause one person to have epilepsy compared to another, and another.
Some people are born with little areas that don’t form properly (dysplasia). These areas are prone to miss firing and starting a seizure. Likewise if there is an injury (head trauma) or illness to the brain (meningitis, tumour) those areas are the source of the start of the seizure. Also if the salts in your blood like sodium are too far out of the normal range, that can cause a seizure too. There is growing knowledge of genetic reasons for someone to be prone to seizures (problems with ion channels in cell membranes, protein problems, it goes on and on but very very not ELI5 territory).
But it all boils down to an area getting too excited and synapse firing in a purposeless way causing a seizure in anyone. But people with epilepsy are those who are more likely to have a seizure without their body being under severe illness/stress.
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