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]