'Crazy' video shows the brainwaves of someone experiencing an epileptic seizure
Kit Roberts
Featured Image Credit: Thieme Group
Warning - This article includes content some readers may find upsetting
An extraordinary video shows what happens to a person's brainwaves while they are in the middle of a seizure.
In the video a man can be seen sitting on a chair in a room with what appears to be electrodes attached to his head.
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He inhales from a cigarette before beginning to have a seizure, with his muscles beginning to spasm.
On a separate part of the screen is shown a series of graphs which are indicating the man's brain activity.
At the start of the video they don't appear to be moving much, or at least just as would be normally expected.
But when the seizure begins, the lines almost immediately start to go wild, to the point that the screen turns almost completely gray.
While the caption on the video claims that it shows the brainwaves in a seizure, some people suggested that this might not strictly be true.
They suggested that while the initial activity is a result of the seizure, the point at which it becomes completely gray could be something else which although related to the seizure is not the brainwaves.
They wrote: "I'm going to be the 'acktually' guy and just point out, you're seeing almost no brainwaves here. The left represents his EEG and is showing entirely 'myogenic' (muscle) artefact.
"You get about 4s of somewhat valuable EEG in here before the remaining 27s is unreadable.
"There are maybe a few possible spikes here that you can't localize because the montage isn't labeled. Otherwise this is all muscle and not brain."
It's not the activity from the seizure directly, but all the brain activity that's occurring as a result of the muscle spasms.
And the result of the data coming in from the muscle spasms means that the reading is 'unreadable'.
Another person also pointed this out, writing: "The EEG isn’t accurately catching a seizure, what you’re seeing is electrical artifact (interference) caused by the muscle contractions from the convulsions. And yes, there are muscles in the scalp that convulse and twitch too."
A third person added: "Please be aware that most of the „brainwaves“ you see on the EEG are artifacts caused by movement of the muscles. Only what you see between seconds 2 and 4 is actually an EEG seizure pattern…"
So essentially the signals from the muscles are completely drowning out brain activity for most of the reading, though at the start you can see when it begins.