That's a bit of a link-bait title, the first line of the abstract reads:
"This case report describes a patient who had hypoxia and posthypoxic intention myoclonus and subsequently developed clonic seizures while solving sudoku puzzles."
So the patient already had some brain damage and the puzzles were a trigger (there are many known potential triggers for seizures including stress).
I'm finding declaring titles to be link-bait the new 'Betteridge's law' spam on HN. In context, this title is entirely not link-bait.
Anyway, regarding seizures, absolutely anything can be a trigger, but is highly dependent on the individual. Stress and sleep deprivation are two common triggers for epileptics. There is an abstract concept called a 'seizure threshold', and when you reach it, you have a seizure. Things like stress reduce this supposed 'seizure threshold'. Multiple stressors reduce the threshold more.
But in my time in neuro, there were a few once-offs like in this article - the notable one was the patient who had seizures when he saw orange circles. Other orange shapes were fine, and other coloured circles were fine - it was just orange circles. Another was a patient who responded to ice on the lips, though we couldn't replicate that in the lab. These kind of triggers are unique, but they show that anything can trigger, if you have the concomitant wiring problem in your brain...
This is a medical case study however, not a journalistic piece and you two are being at least a little bit unfair, I think. Since seizures and sudoku are not a common combination, upon seeing the title, I assumed it was something conditional. This sort of Crucifix Glitch—ahem, environmental epilepsy—is also very uncommon and usually genetic, which makes this all the more interesting.
Here, it seems inhibitory circuits in a section of the right parietal lobe were damaged; without dampening, as with any feedback system, the system quickly goes out of whack. What's interesting here is that in this patient, the only activity that seems to generate a pattern resulting in such over-excitation is playing sudoku. But surely that's not the only Visuospatial task he partakes in, so why? All we're left with is: "Our patient stopped solving sudoku puzzles and has been seizure free for more than 5 years".
The whole point of a link-bait title is that 'in context' it is still accurate. If sudoku puzzles caused seizures by themselves then the title would be accurate. As it is the fact that that particular patient already had a problem seems to me to be quite important and by leaving that fact out the publication likely gets more exposure.
> anything can trigger, if you have the concomitant wiring problem in your brain...
Exactly. So ordinary sudoku solving people should be perfectly ok.
> The whole point of a link-bait title is that 'in context' it is still accurate.
That's the basic technique if you want to mislead without saying outright, blatant lies - you say something that's true only in a specific context, hoping your audience will miss the context. In case of headlines, the audience doesn't even get the context before reading the article.
Yes, I tend to bitch about that practice in journalism a lot. I find it a very serious antisocial pattern of behaviour in media. Why is that? Because most people skim a lot of headlines and read only few articles of interest. So if your pattern of writing is: linkbait bullshit in headline, clarification/refutation in the article, most of the audience will only read the bullshit and read it as a fact.
And I'm talking here about things like half of my country's population talking how our country sucks so much, because compare with Germany or France or something, and you can sometimes trace those opinions back to actual articles with headlines: "Poland worst in Europe in X", where the article itself explains that it's actually 6th (!) on the list of worst European countries in X, behind Germany and France.
Sentiments of entire nations are shaped by those linkbait headlines. And then tell me to trust the democratic process, and that headlines are absolutely not a problem.
It bothers me that you think people need to be protected against being misled by the title of a professional article that is not link-bait in context. It really lowers the bar for expectations of people's intellect.
> and by leaving that fact out the publication likely gets more exposure.
No, that's just how articles in professional journals get titled. This is not a buzzfeed article culled from secondary sources. There is not a single person interested in neurology (the journal's audience) who would be misled by that title. I haven't been in neurology for 11 years, and I knew as soon as I saw the title that the article would be a single-patient case study.
The last thing professionals need is to have to dumb down their communications on the off chance a layperson might stroll by.
Oh good I was worried I would have to quit playing Sudoku. I just won't play it after I get buried by an avalanche. Could I still try and solve Rubic's Cube in that case?
Putting aside fiction, these cases are always so interesting. How much has neuroscience been advanced by studying the very particular ways in which brains don't work?
Plenty. I'd hazard that's how most medical science has come to be.
If you're on this site and haven't already been strongly reccommended to read Oliver Sacks, do so. Broader than neuroscience, look for memoirs of British surgeons during WWII.
$30 for a 24-hour "subscription" (presumably cheaper if you're a med student or doc, but I didn't bother to check).
Am I the only one who wonders whether this access model is sustainable? How many people would actually pay such a fee, and just to read about a single patient, not a major study.
"This case report describes a patient who had hypoxia and posthypoxic intention myoclonus and subsequently developed clonic seizures while solving sudoku puzzles."
So the patient already had some brain damage and the puzzles were a trigger (there are many known potential triggers for seizures including stress).