How Can Flashing Lights Cause Seizures

For many people flashing lights bright lights or bright colors can cause headaches discomfort dizziness or eye pain.

How can flashing lights cause seizures. Fisher md phd faan responds. The development of epilepsy can stem from a specific cause such as head or brain trauma as well as a stroke but the majority including photosensitivity is believed to have a genetic link. Generally flashing lights most likely to trigger seizures are between the frequency of 5 to 30 flashes per second hertz. Symptoms of focal seizures may be confused with other neurological disorders such as migraine narcolepsy or mental illness.

People with photosensitive epilepsy have seizures that are triggered by. The likelihood of such conditions combining to trigger a seizure is small. Bold contrasting visual patterns such as stripes or checks overexposure to video games. Causes of the seizures may also include the brightness of the flashing lights the contrast with background lighting the distance between the person and the light source the wavelength of the light and the person s eyes being opened or closed to the source 2.

Photophobia is fairly common and it has not been found to be related to photo convulsive seizures. Flashing lights or rapidly changing or alternating images as in clubs around emergency vehicles near overhead fans in action movies or television programs etc are examples of patterns in time that can trigger seizures and these are the most common triggers. The frequency or speed of flashing light that is most likely to cause seizures varies from person to person. These seizures may also result in the involuntary jerking of a body part such as an arm or leg and spontaneous sensory symptoms such as tingling dizziness and flashing lights.

Photosensitive epilepsy is a condition whereby symptoms can result from exposure to certain visual stimuli predominantly related to light. Patients with epilepsy have reported having seizures from watching a wide range of things the team found from a spinning potter s wheel to tv commercials that feature strobe like lights.