Effect of computer games..

Well, many parents worry about the mind bending influence computer games might have on their children. But one researcher in the United Kingdom has been investigating a much more tangible side effect: computer games can occasionally induce epileptic fits.

It's a form of a condition called Photosensitive Epilepsy. Professor Graham Harding and his colleagues at the University of Aston in Birmingham have studied a group of such children and adolescents who had convulsions whilst playing at the computer.

It's relatively rare in the population. It occurs at one in three and a half thousand. It's more common in girls than boys, about sixty to forty - which is different from epilepsy, which is slightly more males than females. But the interesting thing about it is that it most commonly occurs around puberty.

And so most photosensitives are between seven and 19 years of age when they have their first attack. Which means that in that population, if someone comes into the surgery and they've had a convulsion, there is a one in ten chance that it was precipitated by a flickering light or a pattern.

Photosensitivity is a strange condition. You have to have a hyper-excitable visual cortex, and a low convulsive threshold. That means that if you or I were presented with a flashing light in a discotheque or something, our brain automatically damps that down. In these patients, it doesn't. And so if that flicker goes on, and it's at the right flash rate, then they will be precipitated into a convulsion.

One in four patients lose photosensitivity. But the other three out of the four will continue for the rest of their lives, even up to 70, 80 years of age.

Now the classic case that you used to read in the medical textbooks was the person with the stroboscopic lamp, who fell down and had a fit, and sometimes with a flickering television. But you've discovered - or you've been working on - a form of photosensitive epilepsy which is really a product of the modern computer age.

hope you understand THis!!!