I was epileptic throughout puberty. After it was diagnosed and i understood what was happening, i started to recognize the feeling of absence/petite mal seizures before they happened. I used to refer to it as an "aura" because i had no better way to phrase it. Medication was a silver bullet for me and it all went away by my early 20s.
I've not had a seizure since, but the closest i have come to experiencing that "aura"-like sensation since has been times of extreme auditory load: loud, frantic music mixed with hustle and bustle around me. And i'm a regular (sober) concert attendee. I've never had a seizure from these situations, but the article puts to words a sensation i've never really voiced to others.
Funny, "aura" is the exact term I've heard other people use to describe the same phenomenon. Likewise for the precursor feeling before migraines.
Glad the seizures eased up in adulthood (knock on wood). A former coworker of mine was in a similar boat—childhood epilepsy, responded well to meds as a teen, totally fine as an adult. It's borderline miraculous how you can just... grow out of it, sometimes. Brains are strange!
Fascinating but why not, light stimulation is well accepted.
It seems odd to me that the article lists anti-seizure medication last among proposed management.
That said, the absolute worst trigger I know of is stress relief. YES. You read that right. Some people have neurological conditions triggered by the relief of stress.
Migrains and epilepsy, once you relax. What a hellish experience
My neuro is still trying to figure out why I sometimes have seizures when trying to fall asleep or when I become deeply relaxed. There's definitely something to dopamine dysfunction and epilepsy, so this music-seizure connection is interesting. Usually dopamine is neuroprotective though, for example in the case of tramadol induced seizures https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/10915818177536...
Brains are so weird. I too have sleep related epilepsy. My seizures are always right on the edge of falling asleep or waking. As in, I know the exact moment I start to fall asleep or wake because the seizure starts with a snap (literally).
Without medication it's 100% of the time. These days they call my type of seizures 'focal aware', but it can generalize to a full blown tonic clonic.
Taking naps are impossible unless I pre-medicate myself, otherwise I'm going to have a seizure.
It turns out the process of sleep is really complex. Lots of chemical and electrical things are happening, and it just happens to trigger some of my (TBI) damaged brain cells. Someday maybe we'll be able to map which specific neurons are damaged by how they are triggered in various forms of epilepsy.
Yeah, feels like I got hit with a lightning bolt in the chest and head while seeing a flash of light just as I start getting relaxed. I assumed it was a general type seizure since my body jerks with it (myoclonic?) but hadn't considered it could be focal. It used to only happen rarely when I was really stressed, but after Lyme and a couple concussions it started trending to an almost every night thing. Why must sleep be so complicated and necessary shakes fist
What you wrote about stress relief is interesting. I wonder if that's a contributor to having a "Type A" personality - people needing to feel like they're in high gear all the time.
in folk medicine that is known as a "healing crisis" .. you let the pressure off of some condition that your body has temporarily halted, and like draining a boil, all the yuck comes out. Oddly this has parallels in emotional therapy too.
Modern strong pain-killers literally mask and prevent these internal system rebalancing, along with emotional flatline response. Humans are complex!
Given that sound and light can cause "abnormal brain activity" that can cause seizures - is it possible that there is also an erratic thought you can think that can cause seizures?
I think so. I imagine it would be some sort of feedback loop. Consider "gnu's not unix" then ask what does the gnu in that stand for, it's also gnu's not unix. and so on. if you don't realise you're stuck in a loop then something goes wrong.
I've not had a seizure since, but the closest i have come to experiencing that "aura"-like sensation since has been times of extreme auditory load: loud, frantic music mixed with hustle and bustle around me. And i'm a regular (sober) concert attendee. I've never had a seizure from these situations, but the article puts to words a sensation i've never really voiced to others.