Soduko Seizures

You know that expression "too much of a good thing?" Well, that applies to this next case. A young man in Germany completed so many Sudoku puzzles (a logic game that may help sharpen memory) that he began having seizures.

Of course, that's only part of the story. The man had been an avid Sudoku solver for some time before experiencing such seizures, but that changed after he was trapped in an avalanche during a ski trip. He was eventually rescued, but while buried under the snow, the man experienced a condition known as hypoxia, in which the body tissues and brain don't receive enough oxygen. This condition caused the man to develop sudden muscle twitches around his mouth when he talked and in the muscles of his legs when he walked. He also experienced spontaneous seizures in his left arm. Doctors prescribed anti-epileptic medications and thought they had these seizures under control.

However, a few weeks after he was discharged from the hospital, the man began having seizures in his left arm again … but only when he did Sudoku puzzles.

Eventually, doctors got to the root of the problem: The man had a very intense "three-dimensional imagination" that was activated whenever he did these brain-stimulating puzzles. The part of his brain that he used when thinking about things in 3D happened to be the part of his brain that was most affected by his 15 minutes of oxygen deprivation under the snow. Over activating] this damaged part of his brain was what caused the man's seizures. Unfortunately, he had to give up Sudoku in order to make a full recovery.