Musicogenic epilepsy

Musicogenic epilepsy is a form of reflex epilepsy with seizures elicited by special stimuli.^[1][2]

It has probably been described for the first time in 1605 by the French philosopher and scholar Joseph Justus Scaliger (1540-1609).^[3] Later publications were, in the eighteenth century, among others, by the German physician Samuel Schaarschmidt,^[4] in the nineteenth century 1823 by the British physician John C. Cooke,^[5] 1881 by the British neurologist and epileptologist William Richard Gowers,^[6] as well as in 1913 by the Russian neurologist, clinical neurophysiologist and psychiatrist Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev.^[7] In 1937 the British neurologist Macdonald Critchley coined the term for the first time^[8] and classified it as a form of reflex epilepsy.^[9]

Most patients have temporal lobe epilepsy.^[10] Listening, probably also thinking or playing,^[11] of usually very specific music with an emotional content triggers focal seizures with or without loss of awareness, occasionally also evolving to bilateral tonic-clonic seizures.

Although musicality is at least in non-musicians predominantly located in the right temporal lobe, the seizure onset may also be left-hemispherical. Of the approximately 100 patients reported in the literature so far, about 75% had temporal lobe epilepsy, women were slightly more affected, and the mean age of onset was about 28 years.^[12] Ictal EEG and SPECT findings^[13][14] as well as functional MRI studies^[15] localized the epileptogenic area predominantly in the right temporal lobe. Treatment with epilepsy surgery leading to complete seizure freedom has been reported.^[16][17]

See also

• Music-specific disorders
• Musicogenic seizure
• Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain

References

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