| Musicogenic epilepsy | |
|---|---|
| Specialty | Neurology |
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]