THE RHYTHM IS GOING TO GET YOU: "Musicogenic epilepsy" is the technical term for seizures brought on by certain types of music.
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Stacey Gayle used to love music. Listening to it and performing it was a big part of her life. She had stacks of CDs in her car, went to concerts of artists like Sean Paul, and would go to parties where hot songs would blare. She was also an active member of the choir at her church: Solid Rock Church of the Nazarene.
Then she started having seizures.
The first one happened while she slept in her bedroom in Rosedale, Queens in New York City on the night of March 3, 2005. She had just turned 22. Her mother rushed her to the emergency room, where doctors stabilized her. Several brain scans and blood tests gave no clue as to why she seized.
Soon after, she had another, this time at a friend's barbecue. She blacked out, fell down and started to shake like crazy as her brain cells went out of whack, firing electrical signals without pause.
At first, the seizures seemed to occur randomly. In the spring of 2006, however, she noticed a pattern. At the time, Sean Paul's "Temperature" was sitting at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, continually being played on urban radio stations. It was playing at nearly every barbecue and party she went to. That was a problem: "Every time it would go on, I would pass out and go into a seizure," she recalls.
All it seemed to take was a few seconds of the song to send Gayle to the floor. "That's the last thing you would think," she explains, "but I did it at home one time and it happened again."
To Gayle, it was clear that the music was causing her seizures. Afraid no one would believe her, she didn't tell a soul except for a lone confidant. Her neurologist, Alan Ettinger at the Long Island Jewish Medical Center (LIJ) in New Hyde Park, N.Y., was in the dark as he put her through a gauntlet of prescriptions. She would eventually try out six antiseizure drugs. The medications offered little relief.
"When you look at individuals who have seizures and whose seizures have not responded to a good trial of two antiseizure medications, the chances of becoming seizure-free from another medication, or another after that, is very slim," says Ettinger.
To try to figure out how to treat Gayle, Ettinger and a colleague admitted her to an epilepsy monitoring unit in early 2007. The idea was to let her have a seizure. For four days, she wore a cap studded with electrodes so that doctors could observe her brain waves and videotape her.
They took her off her medications. No seizure came.
The doctors then tried keeping her awake. Nothing.
Gayle was tired of waiting; she had plans to fly to Jamaica the next day. So she told them to hand over her iPod. She put "Temperature" on repeat and drifted off to sleep.
She seized three times that night.
"The doctors were flabbergasted; they were speechless," says Gayle. "They couldn’t believe what I was saying was actually true."
The next day, Stacey went to JFK Airport on her way to the Caribbean. But as she approached her gate, she overheard Sean Paul blaring from an airport bar.
She never made it onto her flight.
Soon, the reaction spread. Throughout the next year other popular hip-hop and R&B songs like Rihanna's repetitively infectious "Umbrella" and crooner Sean Kingston's earnest "Beautiful Girl" sent Gayle to the floor. She was also responding to alternative music and the sound of the drums that accompanied her church choir's performances. Suddenly it seemed like the only types of music that weren't causing her to have a seizure were jazz and classical—both of which she didn't particular like.
Gayle was forced to drop out of school that fall because of her illness. Personalized ring tones drove her nuts. "When people's phones were going off in class, I was having a lot of seizures at school," she says. "Life just turns upside down when you take music out of it: I remember sitting outside of stores in the mall and crying because I can't even go shopping or sit in a restaurant and eat."
She briefly took a job, working at a Bank of America in Manhattan. But, she couldn't handle the noises on the subway, and she would seize frequently both on her commute and at the office.
With medication having been an unequivocal failure, her doctors were wondering if they could do anything other than keep music away from her—an unlikely proposition.
Macdonald Critchley first described musicogenic epilepsy—the technical term for seizures caused by music—in a 1937 paper, according to celebrated neurologist Oliver Sacks's latest book Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. Ashesh Mehta, a neurosurgeon at LIJ Epilepsy Center, calls the condition "exceedingly rare," noting that there are only 150 case studies ever reported, including the 11 Critchley wrote about. Patients have been known to react to everything from classical music to the Beatles and Pink Floyd to church bells played over a radio.
"All the case reports talk about them being triggered by specific songs or specific tunes and specific singers," says Dan Friedman, a neuroscientist at the Center for Dementia Research at the Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research (NKI)—in Orangeburg, N.Y. "But it’s not the specific tune," he says, "but the emotional reaction to it."
Scientists have no idea what causes epilepsy, which plagues roughly 2.5 million Americans. Normally, although it appears quite controlled, the electrical activity in the brain is quite chaotic, says Mehta. And while seizures would seem to be a loss of control, they're actually the result of much of this activity falling into step, like soldiers in a marching army. "If they are all marching in time across a bridge," he says, "the bridge would start to move." Just as the bridge can become unstable when under that amount of stress, the brain becomes unstable when activity patterns sync up.
Catherine Schevon, a neurologist at the New York–Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center in New York City, says that some epilepsies happen after a network of brain cells that wires together to perform a specific task goes haywire. In the case of musicogenic epilepsy, it seems to affect the cells involved in enjoying music.
Charles Schroeder, a neuroscientist at the NKI, says responding to a song emotionally could cause such groups of cells to become extremely excited—and cause a seizure. Music—perhaps its rhythms—generates a pattern of rhythmic activity in the brain. If that rhythm is similar to a negative pattern that your brain has a tendency toward, the seizures would become associated with particular types of music.
When medications prove ineffective, the only option for relief from the seizures is surgery, which leaves surgeons faced with a difficult choice: "They don't want to take out any more brain than they have to, but they have to take out enough," Schroeder says. "Hopefully, a patient's emotional response to music will be largely unchanged."
For example, if the surgery involves a region of the brain known as the hippocampus, which is involved in memory, patients might have mild memory loss. "Most people would say that's a pretty good trade-off," Schevon adds.
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10 Comments
Add Commentvery interesting...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've read about this before. It's an intriguing phenomena. Though, nothing I've (nor anyone I know personally has) experienced it before. Personally, I've found music to be therapeutic, and in some cases, inspiring. Paradoxically, I've found (music) to be both soothing as well as energizing, depending on the type of music. It's quite often been a source of irritation for me as well, particularly the loud, obnoxious music found in television commercials, and of course genre's of music that I personally detest (i.e. mainstream rap and pop music).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisClearly the patient was aware of which particular tunes were associated with her problem, in which case "Musicophobia" sounds correct but "Your Favorite Song Gives You Seizures" does not.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow what if she has another seizure? Or is that now improbable due to the focal area having been removed or neutralized?
If there had been no surgery, but all the sources of the offending music were removed, what would have happened then?
This sort of treatment seems drastic, rather like the lobotomy craze before the introduction of major tranquilizers. If this was epilepsy with an easily located focal point, it is rather difficult to show that particular recorded pieces of music caused the epilepsy.
It would be dismaying to see others come up and volunteer for similar treatments, claiming other recorded entertainment to be the cause of seizures.
Did anyone try to decompose the offending music and test by features to see if there was any particular feature of the music, or combinations of features which were equally associated with seizures?
And finally, were any other therapies considered besides antiseizure medication and/or surgery?
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Edited by Bradley at 06/09/2008 8:59 PM
I was a musicogenic I am English and for years I could not listen to a guitar riff. Growing up in the seventies the era of the riff meant all my favourite music was robbed from me
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo from the age of 17 till the age of 38 I lived in dread of a car radio, piped supermarket music oh the horrors, the neverending nightmare of convulsing in public. Then by a chance meeting I was sent to see a neuro from one of our major hospitals called Kings college London they wired me up played the music Thin Lizzies Emerald and bingo result three startled neuros and one professor chasing me around the hospital as I went AWOL. Well I had EEG telemetry scans and surgery two thumbsworth of scar tissue I was told And what do I do my housework to Thin Lizzy's Emerald wonderful stuff but in all seriousness not one neurologist believed me. That's why I am glad someone else has been operated on and cured its like being released from prison.
I love your naive comments bradley you sound so knowledgable (not) I think this may be my umpteenth post on this comment I apologise for duplicate posts. I could not listen to a guitar riff without convulsing in public. I was operated on At kings college Londontwo thumbsworth of scar tissue were removed from my brain. Do you know bradley the humiliation and lack of self control that epilepsy causes the tormen of having to avoid car radio's and piped music that is everywhere? Not to mention the stigma of epilepsy. In which case 'musicophobia sounds correct' Go and study some neuro science dear thst is if you've got two brain cells to rub together.. Sorry for being harsh but you have no idea of what it is to be a music o genic its like living in a prison.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am so sorry bradley i fired off without thinking first we have had a lobectomy not a lobotomy I suspect that this lady had right temporal epilepsy then there are eeg's telemetry and Mri and memory and psychological tests to be undertaken. This surgery is not to be undertaken lightly. But as my hospital is one of the oldest and most respected uni/hospitals in England I knew I was in safe hands. And this is England when I say I old I mean old its a large rambling place thank goodness the equipment is magnificent and of course so are the surgeons and professers but please don't confuse a lobotomy with a lobectomy
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI’ve been reacting negatively to ‘bad’ music in the past couple months, literally fleeing concerts in a panic, fingers in my ears, hunching over trying to block the sound if the treble is too high, or louder than the bass or mids. If the music isn’t ‘equal’ with all parts in line running smooth thru my body in a rhythm it’s unbearable. I have to sit in my car and listen to ‘good’ music to ’smooth’ me out. It’s a drug when it’s good. I can’t turn it off. I am literally trapped in my car, unable to turn it off. I have done laps around my neighborhood, slowly lowing the music until I reach the final conclusion that I HAVE to turn it off. In the past week I started to notice I could NOT keep my eyes open when the sound was good. My head goes back, eyes shut, I’m sure I look like I’m tripping on acid or something. It started happening while driving last night. Now my good music is controlling me. I pulled over, couldn’t stop listening, then I noticed my body tightening, my temples to between by eyebrows straight to the entire top of my brain was in a rolling turmoil not sure whether to enjoy or fight the feeling. It was like a musical orgasm..then I had a seizure. Not my normal partial complex, I was aware, but locked up turned sideways in my car. I figured out that my entire body was trying to ‘balance’ the music because my left front speaker wasn’t working. Muscles under my ear tightened trying block the sound, leaving only the right side to interpret what it was hearing. I reached in desperation for the radio, still undecided whether to enjoy this smooth rolling rush overcoming me, or stop this seizure. I was totally exhausted after and noticed I couldn’t be in a room with lights. I slept with an eye mask in silence. Normally I listen to music. I enjoy any genre of music as long as it’s perfect sound, rhythm, no drops, singer can sing, bass there to balance the treble. I’ve always said a good song has to be felt from the groin to the top of my chest, each area feeling the different parts..bass, mids, treble.. I’m weird I know. I go to 50 concerts a year because music is my drug that fixes me and I’ve found only musicians understand some of what I’m saying.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy daughter has musicogenic seizures. She will seize, many due to rythyms in the 15 to 17 cycles, like the strobe lights. Her triggers are music that starts beating in that range, lots of rap and hard rock, the high school marching song [from a quarter of a mile away--I could barely hear it when I turned the car off to take care of the seizure]; people talking together in a crowd; commercial ice makers and air conditioners; and old dot matrix printers printing letters, but not financial forms. She also has audiogenic seizures triggered by loud, obnoxious noises, including the swish, swish heart beat sound of a fetus when turned up on the monitor. We can't always avoid seizures, but can sometimes react by leaving when one happens due to noise, or turning off the song on the radio.a
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI had/have musicogenic epilepsy. I had a grown man's thumb size worth of scar tissue resected from the medial temporal lobe in an awake surgery. I elected amnesia meds and have not yet ordered the video. Removed the right amygdala entirely. Hmm.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIncidentally and nonintentionally in my case, that cures PTSD to a significant degree by removing large chunk of emotion patterning. Rather startling initially, to familiarize memory-self with new post-surgery self emotion habits. Post-surgery was easily able to emotionally sever and divorce an abusive relationship, the emo/PTSD element wasn't there anymore. Was a different person. Bye bye you're a jerk.
I had multiple triggers, music was one. Didn't listen to music for many years. Had to work nights for quiet, avoid all malls, movies, even busy city streets made me ill, and enclosed spaces with echoing sound.
Grocery stores and department stores were a challenge. Echoing sound and especially the sound of many people's voices in conversation echoing in an enclosed space, any good music I would begin to rhapsodize with, and miscellaneous. Rhapsody/appreciation was one trigger point for me, and that comes with music/conversation. Emotions are compulsive to the point of wrinding the flesh/mind. Removal of damaged/scarred amygdala changed my personality/emotions.
I'm based in the UK and have been recently diagnosed with musicogenic epilepsy. I had a controlled test (connected to various machines) where they played a specific record that triggers a seizure (in my case it was 10cc - I'm not in love). The doctors didnt expect to see what happened once the music started playing! The reports show activity in the frontal lobe. Waiting to go for more scans and tests now, needless to say they are very interested in my condition.
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