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Seizures
Published in Alexander R. Toftness, Incredible Consequences of Brain Injury, 2023
(STORY 1) In 1931, a 25-year-old woman described to her physician that since the age of 17 she had experienced fainting attacks upon hearing music. When music was played near her, she would feel weakness, sense that sounds were becoming distant, and then fall to the floor or intentionally lie down to avoid such a fall when fainting. She reported that classical music had the most dramatic effect and that on one occasion she had bitten her tongue and urinated during an attack, both classic signs of seizure. After such attacks she would awaken and feel ill, with a period of lost memory. While in the hospital, the physician tried a few different types of music in order to see what effects they would have. One orchestral record played on a gramophone triggered a seizure, including fainting and convulsions. When she later regained her senses, she described that the music had made her feel a spreading numbness in her body that eventually led to unconsciousness and that she now had a “vile headache” (p. 14). Her musicogenic epilepsy, as her physician referred to it, continued despite attempted treatment (Critchley, 1937, case 1).
Factors That Can Exacerbate Seizures
Published in Stanley R. Resor, Henn Kutt, The Medical Treatment of Epilepsy, 2020
David E. Burdette, Robert G. Feldman
Musicogenic epilepsy is more far-reaching than acoustico-motor epilepsy, for it is induced both by the hearing of specific musical stimuli and by the inward recalling of the appropriate musical passages. The responsible melodies vary widely in genre, and the seizures tend to be complex partial with the ictal EEG showing paroxysmal discharges over either temporal lobe (42). Two subgroups of musicogenic epilepsy exist, one which is sensitive to the mechanical factors (e.g., rhythm, frequency, timbre, or volume) of a piece of music, and the other which responds to the theme of the music, although proof is lacking in light of the rarity of cases (43). Cases reported to date have tended to respond poorly to most forms of therapy, AED or otherwise; however, Forster (43) has had some success with stimulus and threshold alteration.
Telestic mania and near-death experiences
Published in Yulia Ustinova, Divine Mania, 2017
If, however, only former madmen participated in the Corybantic initiations, this phenomenon would not have been so widespread. The majority of the korubantiôntes must have been quite sane. In this connection, it is noteworthy that Socrates’ remarks on the selective reaction of the Corybantic devotees to one tune only and their strong physiological reaction are endorsed by modern research on the effects of music on the brain. On the one hand, pathological manifestations, such as seizures in patients suffering from musicogenic epilepsy, are provoked by a certain kind of music, either a particular quality of sound or the emotional impact of a specific style.90 On the other hand, healthy individuals with special sensitivity to music display different physiological reactions to different musical performances. J. C. Fachner observes that a study on religious and deep listeners (people who have strong emotional reactions, like goosebumps or crying or are otherwise deeply moved when listening to their favourite music) in comparison to controls showed stronger responses in heart rate and galvanic skin response when listening to self-selected, preferred music.… Deep listeners described their experiences in transcendent terms and responses occurred parallel to differing parts of the music that were of high subjective valence for the listeners.91 This study suggests that the Corybantic initiates who did not suffer from any mental problem reacted to the tunes performed during the ceremonies in a way that ensured their excitement was apparent to all, enjoyed this sensation immensely, and developed emotional connection bordering on addiction to the rites.92
Precipitation and inhibition of seizures in focal epilepsies
Published in Expert Review of Neurotherapeutics, 2018
However, focal epilepsies have now been shown to be network disorders, and their ictogenic mechanisms are most likely not restricted to local neuronal dysfunction. In some cases, advanced studies of reflex seizures with various structural and functional imaging techniques as well as sophisticated neurophysiological studies, e.g. of connectivity, have provided first insights into these relations. Multimodal analyses have been particularly rewarding. Here, musicogenic seizures are especially interesting as they occur only in a small minority of the many patients with TLE who usually have above-average musical abilities. In these, comparable to system epilepsies, ictogenesis seems to happen in a premorbid functional-anatomic network. Only it is probably not an ubiquitous network but the result of musical learning. Still, its establishment seems to precede epileptogenesis. Independently from etiology, musicogenic seizures seem to occur when the ictogenic mechanisms gain access to this physiological network. Musicogenic epilepsy thus seems to represent an intermediate type of ictogenesis between other focal and system epilepsies.
What caused Joan of Arc’s neuropsychiatric symptoms? Medical hypotheses from 1882 to 2016
Published in Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, 2023
After examining Joan’s testimony from the trial transcript in light of the epilepsy literature, Foote-Smith and Bayne characterized Joan’s descriptions of her experiences as consistent with musicogenic epilepsy, a form of reflex epilepsy; in Joan’s case, they hypothesized that the seizures were triggered by the sound of church bells (Foote-Smith and Bayne 1991). They quoted Joan, from the trial transcript, “Yesterday, I heard … [the voices] three times, once in the morning at Matins, once at Vespers, and again when the Ave Maria rang in the evening” (Foote-Smith and Bayne 1991, 811). They cited one well-documented case of musicogenic epilepsy in which a left anterotemporal focus had been identified by EEG (Foote-Smith and Bayne 1991, 811).