How do strobing lights induce seizures?
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It’s not 100% known exactly how this happens but, based on this article [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1528-1157.1999.tb02018.x](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1528-1157.1999.tb02018.x) and my understanding of it, there are 2 visual pathways: one that is more sensitive to high frequency visual stimuli and one that is more sensitive to high contrast (colorful) stimuli. When someone with light-sensitive epilepsy sees quick flashing lights, this first pathway (the one that is more sensitive to high frequency stimuli) gets triggered and causes an electrical response in the brain. This electrical discharge then spreads and activates a bunch of areas of the brain, which causes seizures.
Epilepsy, in its many forms boils down to a wildfire of electric pulses in a certain part of the brain, or completely. This is akin to throwing water on a bunch of electric cables as the electricity will go haywire. If a particular brain is sensitive, flashing light could overload a certain circuit and cause the short.
This is of course an enormous generalisation
There is actually a wierd phenomenon that normal brains do when excited to strobing lights as well. During an EEG test to try catch seizures they flash a strobe light at specific frequencies and your brain waves will actually synch to the frequency of the lights. As others have said we don’t understand why seizure happen but it’s most likely your brain being overstimulated.
Epilepsy is a condition where electrical activity in the brain is excessive and disordered.
In most cases, the person gets random episodes of symptoms. This can vary from going blank, through to collapse and full on convulsions and unconsciousness.
These episodes tend to be random and can’t be triggered, although certain things may make them more likely to happen, like lack of sleep.
However, rarely, there are forms of epilepsy where if a particular part of the brain works very hard, and that is where the epileptic attacks are centred, then this can trigger an epileptic attack – this is called reflex epilepsy. Reflex epilepsies have a variety of types, but the most common is photosensitive epilepsy. In photosensitive epilepsy, strong visual stimulation such as from strobe lights, flashing or brightly coloured images or patterns, can trigger a seizure. Essentially, each strobe flash results in a pulse of brain activity over a large part of the visual pathways in the brain, and that synchronised pulse seems to be the trigger.
There are other types of reflex epilepsies – which can be triggered by other sensory experiences (sounds, smells) or even doing specific mental tasks (playing chess) or actions (speaking or singing).
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