Gaming and epilepsy?

N

ninzel

Veteran
I wonder if anyone has had problems with this or knows anything about it.
The reason I ask is that my dog has been prone to seizures and my vet suggested it could be do to the fact that my dog sit and watches me play video games and actually watches the games.
My dog has epilepsy and of course the potential is there,but I wonder if this is game specific or just video games in general. I'm just trying to figure out what my have brought my dogs seizures lately and have kept her from sitting with me while I play for now.
 
Generally speaking it can be anything but actions needed to trigger the episode can happen in nearly all video games with the amount of flashing images. I have noticed recently that alot of games come with warnings on the back or even have it at the title screens, etc. It would be good to keep your dog from watching.
 
LOL

We had a black lab that was epileptic, she was on phenobarbital all the time. Has your vet medicated your dog at all?
 
digitalwanderer said:
LOL

We had a black lab that was epileptic, she was on phenobarbital all the time. Has your vet medicated your dog at all?
Click to expand...


Starting with Potassium Bromide due to the fact that Pheno can be bad for their system,plus Bromide is cheaper. If it doesn't work we will have to go for Pheno.
It's funny,my dog doesn't care for movies or TV,but loves watching video games.
 
Bromide didn't work for our pup, but the pheno did and she lived a very long and happy life.

She was the mellowest, coolest pup we ever had. :)
 
ninzel said:
Starting with Potassium Bromide due to the fact that Pheno can be bad for their system,plus Bromide is cheaper. If it doesn't work we will have to go for Pheno.
It's funny,my dog doesn't care for movies or TV,but loves watching video games.
Click to expand...

My dog doesn't watch tv or movies either, but if i play games she sits next to me and watches.
 
I'm no medical expert, but that seems like a little bit of a stretch to me. I always kind of assumed that the whole video game/epilepsy thing would be caused by spending large amounts of time staring at the screen in a state of twitch-sensitive hyper-alertness, with your fingers just waiting to react to that "fire" command from your brain.
When I was a kid, I was kind of a spaz, and I could never really sit still for too long. I started to develop these little nervous ticks, like twitching my head and excessive blinking and stuff like that. Eventually, I grew out of it for the most part, but even now, (playing on a pc monitor probably isn't helping) after a couple of solid hours of video games, I catch myself doing those things occasionally, and I definitely think the whole "eye to brain to nerve to muscle" thing is a big part of it. In other words, I think it's caused by actually playing games as opposed to just watching. I think the type of game being played is also a huge factor. It's much more likely to happen after two hours of COD4 than two hours of Splinter Cell, you know?
How old is your dog? I had a retreiver that never had any problems for years, and then developed epilepsy when he got older.
 
Certainly types of epilepsy have fits caused by certain patterns of flashes. It's not to do with duration or frequency of flashy graphics, just whether it hits your button or not. Thus an epileptic can sit through some flashy, strobing images just fine, and yet not others.

ninzel - you may be able to pin it down to particular game, and from that guess what sort of visual stimuli brings an attack on, and avoid exposing your dog to those.
 
Get your dog to sit further away.

Use a high refresh rate (100hz+) or LCD display.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
That shouldn't make a difference. It's the variations in graphics/images that cause the epilepsy. As there's no strobing effect in LCDs as there was in CRTs, refresh rate has no impact on what the viewer sees. It's a flat, constant illumination whether 10 Hz or 100Hz.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
That shouldn't make a difference. It's the variations in graphics/images that cause the epilepsy. As there's no strobing effect in LCDs as there was in CRTs, refresh rate has no impact on what the viewer sees. It's a flat, constant illumination whether 10 Hz or 100Hz.
Click to expand...

Actually it can and does have an impact. I'm not saying it'll prevent the effect, but it can reduce the impact. I can link a few sources if you like.
 
Okay, that's just confirming what I was saying. A CRT with flicker can cause seizures. Either get a 100/120 Hz refresh CRT, or an LCD.
 
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