Solving a sudoku puzzle caused a man to experience seizures.
According to a case study published in the Journal of Medical Association (JAMA) Neurology, a man who was admitted in the hospital due to a skiing accident reportedly experienced seizures while he was solving a Sudoku puzzle.
The 25-year-old German patient, a physical education student, survived an avalanche hit, being buried under the snow and being oxygen deprived for 15 minutes. He was left with jerking muscle movements whenever he tried to move or speak. Adding to these symptoms, he suddenly experienced clonic seizures while doing a Sudoku puzzle, which just as oddly ceased when he stopped solving the numbers logic game.
"A 25-year-old student...was buried by an avalanche during a ski tour," neurologist Dr. Berend Feddersen of the Department of Palliative Medicine, University of Munich and his team in the case analysis. "Weeks later when the patient was trying to solve Sudoku puzzles...he developed clonic seizures of the left arm."
The object of a Sudoku puzzle is to have the numbers 1 to 9 appear in all of the vertical and horizontal columns as well as in every 3x3 box without repeating any numbers in the same row, column or 3x3 box. The patient tried to solve his puzzle by visualizing possible solutions in 3D, which then triggered a seizure due to a reflex epilepsy left behind by the accident.
"In our patient, hypoxia [oxygen deprivation] most likely caused some diffuse, widespread damage," Feddersen wrote.
Reflex epilepsy seizures are triggered by external stimuli like solving puzzles, reading, playing games or even by touch or sensation. For this patient, however reading and solving the puzzle were not what triggered the seizure, but his visualization technique in attempting to solve it.
"When he solves Sudoku, one of his strategies is to arrange the numbers in some 3D manner," Feddersen said. "That's very interesting, because when I do Sudoku, I just make trial and error."
The researchers noted that the patient was lucky that the seizures are only triggered when he was solving Sudoku puzzles and not while performing other activities that would have affected his daily living.
The patient had to let go solving Sudoku puzzles as a result, but because of this, has remained seizure free for more than 5 years.
