BOSTON — A spokeswoman for Sen. Edward Kennedy says he is conscious and talking to family after he suffered a seizure in his Cape Cod home and was flown to a Boston hospital.

The 76-year-old Massachusetts Democrat fell ill at his home Saturday morning and was rushed to a local hospital. He later was flown to Massachusetts General Hospital to determine the cause of the seizure.

Spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said he is “conscious, talking, joking with family.”

His wife, children and niece Caroline Kennedy are among those with him at the hospital.

The second longest serving member of the Senate had surgery in October to repair a nearly complete blockage in a major neck artery. The surgery is done to prevent stroke.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, speaking at the Nevada Democratic Convention in Reno, said he spoke to Kennedy’s wife Saturday afternoon and was told “his condition is not life-threatening, but serious.”

“But the one thing I can say, if there ever was a fighter, anyone who stood for what we as Americans, we as Democrats, stand for, it’s Ted Kennedy,” Reid said.

Kennedy went to Cape Cod Hospital on Saturday morning “after feeling ill at his home,” Cutter said. After discussion with his doctors in Boston, Kennedy was taken to Massachusetts General.

An official who declined to be identified by name, citing the sensitivity of the events, had earlier said that Kennedy had stroke-like symptoms. The hospital declined to comment on his condition.

In October, Kennedy had surgery to repair a nearly complete blockage in a major neck artery. The discovery was made during a routine examination of a decades-old back injury.

The hourlong procedure on his left carotid artery — a main supplier of blood to the face and brain — was performed at Massachusetts General. This type of operation is performed on more than 180,000 people a year to prevent a stroke.

The doctor who operated on Kennedy said at the time that surgery is reserved for those with more than 70 percent blockage, and Kennedy had “a very high-grade blockage.”

Distinguishing between a seizure and TIA, often called a mini-stroke, can sometimes be difficult.

Seizures are little electrical storms in the brain. They tend to be brief; an occasional one can happen to anyone even without a prior history of seizures, especially if there has been some prior brain trauma.

A stroke is either ischemic — a clog in a blood vessel — or hemorrhagic, bleeding in the brain. Hemorrhagic ones are very rare. Kennedy had the carotid artery surgery to try to prevent the ischemic type. A stroke kills brain tissue; how much depends on how big it is and how long it lasts. Some people show no lasting effects; others can be partly paralyzed on one side or somewhere in-between.