Pokemon and 2012 Olympics set off epilepsy trail
9 Oct 2009 by Evoluted New Media
What did an episode of the Pokemon cartoon in 1997 and the promotion of the 2012 London Olympics have in common?
What did an episode of the Pokemon cartoon in 1997 and the promotion of the 2012 London Olympics have in common?
They both used animated video footage that triggered hundreds of epileptic attacks across the world.
Although guidelines on specific visual parameters for television are available, very little is known about the relationship between colour-combinations (chromaticity) and photosensitivity. A study led by Dr Joydeep Bhattacharya from Goldsmiths, University of London, has investigated the brain response to different flickering coloured displays.
The group investigated the photosensitive response against flickering colours in nine adult controls, an unmedicated patient suffering from photosensitive epilepsy, two age-matched controls, and another medicated patient. They found that the healthy human brain remains in a high state of disorder but the epileptic brain becomes highly ordered making it prone to hyper-excitation in the form of an epileptic fit. There are underlying brain dynamics that remain unsolved, for example, red-blue flickering displays cause larger excitation than red-green or blue-green stimulus.
Dr Bhattacharya said: “These findings support the ‘decomplexification hypothesis’: a healthy brain is more ‘complex’ than a pathological brain.”
Dr Bhattacharya wants to expand on his initial findings: “It is important to extend the research with larger number of patients to find at what extent these statistical and complexity measures applied in the present paper would have diagnostic potential.”
The new findings may lead to a better understanding of photosensitive epilepsy and recommend new guidelines for broadcasters.
By Leila Sattary
