Posted on 10/19/2015 2:31:14 PM PDT by Gamecock
Solving sudoku puzzles led to seizures in a young German man, say scientists from the University of Munich who wrote about the unusual medical tale in JAMA Neurology.
The 25-year-old man, a physical education student, had survived being buried just weeks before by an avalanche during a ski trip. Deprived of oxygen for 15 minutes, he developed muscle jerks when he tried to speak and walk. While in the hospital, he was trying to work out a sudoku puzzle when he began to experience clonic seizures of his left arm, which had not been injured in the accident. Clonic seizures involve repeated jerking of the muscles. When the patient stopped trying to solve the puzzle, oddly, the seizures ceased.
In their report about the unique case, Dr. Berend Feddersen and colleagues explained that the patient experienced reflex epilepsy which is characterized by seizures induced by external stimuli such as reading, making calculations, touching, a warm bath, playing games, noise -- or in this case, a sudoku puzzle.
To solve a sudoku puzzle, every digit from 1 to 9 needs to appear in each of 9 vertical columns, in each of 9 horizontal rows, and in each of 9 boxes. The way the patient figured out answers to the puzzle was by visualizing solutions in 3D, but because his brain was damaged by the accident, this triggered reflex epilepsy.
"In our patient, hypoxia [oxygen deprivation] most likely caused some diffuse, widespread damage," Feddersen wrote.
The brain consists of brain cells connected by fibers, explained Mayo Clinic neurologist Dr. Elson So, an epilepsy specialist.
"We can look at the brain as a network system. There are some centers for mathematical concepts and others for language. The authors have shown with some evidence that the fibers connecting the centers were damaged," So said.
So explained that not all the fibers in the brain play a role in "activating" specific functions; they also play a role in keeping other things down. "Every complex system needs an activating and deactivating systems. Everything in moderation."
He said the fibers that are supposed to moderate the excitation for mathematical concepts and exercises had become hyper-activated because of damage to fibers that should be tempering the excitation.
"It's a very interesting finding and a nice demonstration for what is basically reflex epilepsy," said So.
Fortunately for the patient in Germany, kicking his sudoku habit was enough to stop the seizures.
"Our patient stopped solving sudoku puzzles and has been seizure free for more than five years," Feddersen wrote.
So has my fiance’s mother.
Ah. The old Mother-in-Law syndrome.
[ Solving sudoku puzzles led to seizures in a young German man, ]
Germany won’t have this problem for much longer as the savages currently invading don’t give a crap about learning just repeating what is in the KOR-AN.
All sudoku puzzle books will be burned because they are not mentioned in the kor-an...
That usually happens when you’ve spent more than an hour on a particularly hard program only to have less than 10 cells left, and yet it’s impossible to solve because somewhere possibly at the start of the puzzle, you’ve made a mistake.
Good think he wasn’t playing with a Rubik’s Cube.
/johnny
Something about this doesn't quite add up...
i know the feeling, something i haven't had to deal with for over 15 years... thank God once, may moons ago, it was two periods at the end of a statement
finding it on a paper print out took forever
Yeah... an extra symbol at the end of a statement is hard to see.
Learning the difference between single quote and double quote in RegEx took me a while.
/johnny
“Doctor, it hurts when I do that.”
“Don’t do that.”
I do sudoku puzzles all the time and they drive me NUTS!!!!!, they are, however, great mind challenges and I’m addicted to them.
I took to solving these at lunch and whwn I would visit my parents I would do the puzzle in their paper and I taught my mother... now that seems to be her favorite pastime... the old man actually bought her a sudoku book for christmas last year. I created a monster.
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