[State of the art in musicogenic epilepsy: a review of the scientific literature].

INTRODUCTION

Musicogenic epilepsy is a type of reflex complex epilepsy and is evoked by musical stimulus, specially music with high emotional content to the patient.

AIM

To review the state of the art of the musicogenic epilepsy in the current literature.

DEVELOPMENT

We have made an analysis of all the patients that have been described with musicogenic epilepsy. Among the most studied variables we have included: the nature of the sound that evoke the seizure, the musical education of the patients, the changes between the different neurophysiological and neuroimaging techniques, the most frequent location and the hemispheric side implication in seizures, and comparison between the different neuroimaging techniques. Most of the patients had seizures when they were listening to music with emotional content. The right temporal lobe is the most affected area in this type of epilepsy. In these studies the structural neuroimaging were normal in most of the patients.

CONCLUSIONS

Musicogenic epilepsy is reflex and complex and music with emotional content to the patients is the most frequent stimulus that evoke this type of epilepsy. The right temporal lobe is the most affected area. It seems that exists a correlation between emotional and auditory cerebral processing networks.