Video games are exciting: a European study of video game-induced seizures and epilepsy.

> Epileptic Disorders-Video gam es are exciting: a European study of video gam e-induced seizures and epilepsy. [Published w ith videosequences]. Login Mot de passe Se loguer au compte d'une institution > Activer mon compte > Video games are exciting: a European study of video game-induced seizures and epilepsy. [Published with videosequences]. With the widespread introduction of video games (VGs) for home entertainment, an increasing number of case histories of video game epilepsy have been reported [1-6]. Following massive sales of video games as Christmas presents in 1992, numerous cases of video game epilepsy began attracting media attention in January 1993. These incidents were particularly attributed to the Nintendo video game Super Mario World. Until now it has not been made clear whether specific video games (such as Super Mario World, being still one of the most popular VGs for home-entertainment) provoked epileptic seizures in susceptible children or whether this was purely coincidental or dependent on the properties of the television screen that the game is played on. VG seizures are reported to occur most often in boys of about ten years of age, while visual-sensitive patients are predominantly female adolescents. Epilepsy in general has the highest incidence among children, and the occurrence of a seizure whilst playing a video game could thus be a coincidence. Non-specific epileptogenic factors, such as fatigue or stress may also be involved. However, there are several reasons suggesting that most of these children belong to a group of susceptible, visual-sensitive epilepsy subjects. First, the majority of children playing video games sit very close to the TV set and sensitivity to the epileptogenic effects of television increases with proximity [7]. This is partly a function of the area of retina that is stimulated but, at close viewing, subjects who are not sensitive to flicker at the screen refresh frequency (60 Hz in North America and parts of Japan, and 50 Hz in Europe), may react to the 30/25 Hz alternating pattern of the raster [8, 9]. Secondly, most of the patients with video game-induced seizures appeared not only to be sensitive to intermittent photic stimulation (IPS) in the laboratory, but also had a clear history of other visually-induced seizures, such as sunlight shining through the trees and television screens in general. In addition, certain images presented on the television screen, such as slowly moving patterns and bright static images, appear to be especially epileptogenic [10, …