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Surgeons cure epileptic fits caused by music
Brain surgeons have cured a rare condition in a Canadian woman who went into epileptic fits whenever she heard music by her favourite performer, hip-hop and reggae star Sean Paul.
- AP
- Published: 23:12 January 18, 2008
Garden City, New York: Brain surgeons have cured a rare condition in a Canadian woman who went into epileptic fits whenever she heard music by her favourite performer, hip-hop and reggae star Sean Paul.
Stacey Gayle recently underwent brain surgery at Long Island Jewish Medical Center to cure the rare condition known as musicogenic epilepsy.
Gayle, a 25-year-old customer service employee at a bank in Alberta, Canada, was suffering as many as 10 grand mal seizures a day, despite being treated with medications designed to control them. The condition became so bad she eventually had to quit her job and leave the church choir where she sang.
Eighteen months ago, she began to suspect that music was triggering some of her seizures. She recalled being at a barbecue and collapsing when the Jamaican rapper Sean Paul's music started playing, and then remembered having a previous seizure when she heard his music.
Her suspicions were confirmed on a visit to the Long Island medical centre last February, when she played Paul's hit Temperature on her iPod for doctors. Soon after, she suffered three seizures.
"Being that the seizures could be triggered by the music, this was a very interesting opportunity to study Stacey's brain," said Dr Ashesh Mehta, the hospital's director of epilepsy surgery.
During the surgery, doctors removed parts of her brain suspected of causing the seizures.
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