Why do people get seizures from blinking lights?
In: 4
Every stimulus produces a corresponding neural signal in the brain. Repeating stimuli produce repeating signals.
Seizures are a cascade of rhythmic but uncoordinated neural signals which follow uncontrolled and looped signal paths. As neural signals travel around the loop, they feed back and amplify, much like how putting a microphone next to an PA speaker creates feedback.
In people prone to seizures (i.e. epilepsy) the repeating signal from a blinking light can excite a neural feedback loop to begin growing until it creates a cascade of feedback. In people not prone to seizures, these feedback loops are moderated and dampened enough to avoid a feedback cascade.
When neurons fire, it’s usually part of a network. In this network sometimes there’s a loop where they are activated more and more each time the loop repeats. So with a light, the the loop gets activated. There’s another part that acts like a traffic controller and makes sure the loop doesn’t get too excited.
So for normal people, when the light goes on, the loop gets activated, and it turns of when the light goes off. In epilepsy, the traffic controllers can’t really do their job well and so the loop doesn’t get turned off/doesn’t get turned off quickly enough.
Now comes the important part. One loop can cause other loops to get activated and so on and so forth. Now imagine what happens when the traffic controllers can’t control that. EVERYTHING starts getting activated and this results in the seizures.
Latest Answers