Seizure definition, causes & cure: student experiences attacks after playing Sudoku

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In a unique medical case, a 25-year-old man suffered epileptic fits every time he tried to solve a Sudoku puzzle.

MedPage Today identified the man as Dominick Erich, a German student taking up physical education. More than five years ago, Erich went skiing when an avalanche occurred.

The researchers' report on the journal JAMA Neurology states the man was buried and deprived of oxygen for 15 minutes. A few weeks after he was rescued, he developed involuntary muscle jerking around the mouth and on his legs whenever he tried to talk or walk.

Both arms were unaffected during this time. This changed a few weeks later when he started solving Sudoku puzzles, Time reports.

"He was in the rehabilitation clinic, and he was bored, so he started doing Sudokus," said Dr. Berend Feddersen on Time. Dr. Feddersen is a neurologist and one of the authors of the study.  

Every time the right-handed Erich tried to solve a puzzle, his left arm would start jerking. A video showing the epileptic fits can be viewed on the JAMA Network.

Interestingly enough, Erich did not have fits when he was writing, reading or doing math problems. The seizures would only occur when he tried to sort numbers in an ascending order, the researchers wrote on their report.

MRI and CT scans were conducted while the patient while the patient went through a puzzle. The scans indicated that there was widespread damage to his brain and fibers on the right side of his brain, inducing the fits.

"In order to solve a Sudoku, the patient used regions of his brain which are responsible for visual-spatial tasks. But exactly those brain parts had been damaged in the accident and then caused the seizures once they were used," Feddersen indicated on the JAMA report.

Professor of neurology at the NYU Langone School of Medicine, Dr. Jacqueline French, told Today that this was a case of reflex epilepsy.

"You have to have the epileptic focus first - for example because of an injury of your brain - and then seizures like that can happen," Dr. French said on Today.

Medscape defines reflex epilepsy as a condition where fits are induced by external stimuli. This type of epilepsy is rare, occurring in only 5% of seizures.

Dr. Feddersen told MedPage Today that this was the first case of seizures induced by solving Sudoku puzzles.

Fortunately for Erich, the cure was simple: stop doing Sudoku. The study concludes that the patient has not had a fit in over five years.