How do strobing lights induce seizures?
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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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