- Joined
- Sep 24, 2007
- Messages
- 154
- Reaction score
- 0
... in 1994 I worked for a neurologist who had a "nintendo epilepsy" patient - a 12 year old girl who had seizures triggered by the flicker from cheap computer displays - "photosensitive" epilepsy - actually fairly rare.
we studied her EEG while she watched different size & frequency patterns so we could identify "pre-seizure" brainwaves (and then stop the display so not to actually trigger a serious episode). we found that higher contrast + brightness of display made a difference as well as the rate of flicker and size of the stripes in the pattern, and some other interesting details ...
fortunately at least 2 good things for the patient came out of this - first just a simple suggestion for her to wear sunglasses when looking at computer screens (to reduce brightness + contrast) - and second, she learned to recognize subtle signs of pre-seizure state (as we confirmed from the EEG) and learned to look away or close her eyes to avoid having a real seizure.
anyway .... interesting to see - sure enough - nintendoepilepsy.com (regged since December 2005) parked via oversee.net - also nintendonitis.com (regged since July 2007) parked at godaddy.
a quick google shows Nintendo used to be fairly quick to sue even for borderline cases such as DK64.com (infringed "donkey kong 64" according to Nintendo) ... but that was 7 years ago.
we studied her EEG while she watched different size & frequency patterns so we could identify "pre-seizure" brainwaves (and then stop the display so not to actually trigger a serious episode). we found that higher contrast + brightness of display made a difference as well as the rate of flicker and size of the stripes in the pattern, and some other interesting details ...
fortunately at least 2 good things for the patient came out of this - first just a simple suggestion for her to wear sunglasses when looking at computer screens (to reduce brightness + contrast) - and second, she learned to recognize subtle signs of pre-seizure state (as we confirmed from the EEG) and learned to look away or close her eyes to avoid having a real seizure.
anyway .... interesting to see - sure enough - nintendoepilepsy.com (regged since December 2005) parked via oversee.net - also nintendonitis.com (regged since July 2007) parked at godaddy.
a quick google shows Nintendo used to be fairly quick to sue even for borderline cases such as DK64.com (infringed "donkey kong 64" according to Nintendo) ... but that was 7 years ago.