Epilepsy Talk

Epileptic Synesthesia: What Is It?

A friend of mine with TLE, told me he had synesthesia and I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. And so, I set to find out exactly what this mysterious sounding condition was…

First of all, Epileptic Synesthesia is pretty rare.

It occurs in 4% of temporal lobe seizures and is theoretically caused by the actual electric discharge or abnormal stimulation of the brain in a seizure.

Sight, sound, touch, taste (and, much less often, your sense of smell) sensations can occur simultaneously and also involve involuntary movement.

An example is the sensation of flashing lights, a taste, a feeling of heat rising, and a high-pitched whine.

Here are three other (rather alarming) examples: