Click here to find out more. Music can induce epileptic seizures in the brain. While rare, this phenomenon indicates both the potential power of music and a little-known negative side. However, and remarkably, recent findings show that music can actually reduce brain seizures in common forms of epilepsy. Blissfully unaware are we of the delicate duet ongoing in our brains, of equal partners balanced so exquisitely that a misstep, a neural stumble as it were, can banish awareness of the outside world and distort beyond recognition our inner mental life.
Neurons send each other messages in the form of electrical impulses.
If the net result of this neuronal arithmetic shows that excitation is sufficiently greater than inhibition, then the cell sends electrical pulses to all of the thousands of other cells that are connected to its output paths. The delicate balance of excitation and inhibition keeps our brains functioning correctly. Too much or too little of one or the other, and the duet stops. Those among us subject to such brain seizures are victims of the much misunderstood, and in earlier eras of superstition and ignorance feared and condemned, disease of epilepsy. Epilepsy's causes are several, including head trauma, lack of oxygen, infection, tumors and toxic agents, but specific causes may be absent in as many as half the cases.