About

Thank you for visiting. Many people don’t realize they or their children are having seizures while playing video games. Most seizures don’t look at all like you’d expect. Because the symptoms vary so much from one person to another, seizures can be hard to identify. For several years my teenage daughter had seizures every day from the flashing images in her video games — while nobody knew.

Like many other parents we didn’t give any thought to the seizure warnings on her games. I’m not sure I even read them. Even though we couldn’t see her seizures and she didn’t know they were happening, they caused serious problems with her physical health, school performance, and behavior. After we figured out what was going on, she gave up video games (not an easy thing to do), and her functioning improved dramatically.

I created the website www.videogameseizures.org to provide basic information about the problem, with links to more sources. I’ve also written some articles. One article about our experience with video game seizures appeared in epilepsy.com’s journal Epilepsy: Insights and Strategies and won the 2010 Excellence in Epilepsy Journalism award for online media from the International Bureau for Epilepsy. Since music videos, DVDs, TV, cell phones, and other flickering visual media can trigger these seizures, too, sometimes I write about them as well.

I have no financial interest in anything I’ve written about, nor do I give medical advice. I’m not a software engineer trained in design or QA. But I’ve read a great deal of relevant research and learned how to use an application that indicates whether digital graphics exceed recommended safety limits for individuals with photosensitive epilepsy. No intent to defame, etc. Want to know more about me and my writing about medical issues? I’m on LinkedIn and I have a website.

Please share your experiences and questions. Contact me at: vgseizures@gmail.com.

Jessica Solodar

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