Sudoku Puzzle (Photo : YouTube)
A young German man's solving sudoku puzzles caused him to suffer seizures in an extremely rare medical case. He had suffered an accident during a ski trip after being buried by an avalanche, causing muscle spasms when he tried to talk and walk. While recovering in the hospital the physical education student experienced chronic muscle-jerking seizures in his left arm while trying to figure out the number-placement brain-teaser, which ended after he stopped working on the sudoku game.
The study was published in JAMA Neurology. It was conducted by scientists from the University of Munich.
A few weeks after his mishap, the patient became bored during his recovery in the hospital. Thus, he started doing some sudokus.
The cause of the seizure was a big question mark because it started in the man's left arm. However, neither of his arms had been injured during the skiing accident, according to Nature World Report.
Dr. Berend Feddersen and his team investigated the man's case study. He explained that the patient had gone through "reflex epilepsy," which is a seizure triggered by external causes including reading, playing games, doing calculations, noise, or even a sudoku puzzle.
Solving sudoku puzzles requires every digit ranging from 1 to 9 to show in each of 9 vertical columns, horizontal rows, and boxes. The patient tried to solve it by picturing abstract three-dimensional solutions in his mind.
This method of solving sudoku puzzles caused the reflex epilepsy. That was due to brain damage he suffered after the skiing accident.
Feddersen wrote in the study's findings that the patient probably suffered oxygen deprivation, which caused broad damage, according to CBS News. That in turn resulted in the sudoku seizures.
Dr. Elson So of the Mayo Clinic explained that fibers connect brain cells in the mathematics and language centers of the human brain. The new German study showed neurological damage in those centers.
So explained the fibers that normally keep the triggering of the brain's math concept fibers had been "hyper-activated" due to their damage. Thus, the patient's seizures were launched as he mentally sorted numbers, and ended when he stopped solving sudoku puzzles.
Feddersen reported that the patient ceased working on the problems, including sudoku online games. It has been his extraordinary solution for how to cure seizures.
This video gives some tips about how to solve a sudoku puzzle:
