Music helps explain nature of epilepsy

Just as an orchestra brings together violins, flutes and clarinets, epilepsy research is bringing together art and science at Kansas University.

Music professors Deron McGee and Kip Haaheim are collaborating with Dr. Ivan Osorio, who works at the KU Medical Center, to create a musical metaphor for an epileptic seizure.

“An orchestra has a variety of different sections, each playing their own parts, but, in the end, the entire result is harmonious, a harmonious whole something that’s greater than the sum of parts,” McGee said.

The professors are using an adaptation of Mozart’s “Symphony No. 40 in G Minor” to illustrate musically what happens in the brain when nerves start to misfire sporadically, causing a seizure.

“A lot of seizures are described in very clinical, very sterile terms, and this piece captures not only the essence of a seizure in terms of the technical specifications, but it also captures the emotion that’s there the fear, the anxiety, the isolation, the trauma,” McGee said.

Trauma changed Susan Arthurs’ life. The director of the Alliance for Epilepsy Research, Arthurs used to be a commercial pilot before developing epilepsy.

Now she works to help break down barriers for people who suffer from epilepsy.

“Understanding goes a long way to helping dispel the stigma that still surrounds epilepsy. It’s still a very hidden disease. I think it’ll help to have that public awareness and understanding,” she said.

And using music is a good way to carry out that mission.

“It makes it accessible; it makes it available to just about anybody,” McGee said. “Anybody can understand music, but they may not be able to understand mathematic symbols and algorithms.”

“It was extremely powerful for me. It brought me to tears,” Arthurs said. “It was just so almost real. The metaphor is very strong.”

It’s the strength of the metaphor that both researchers and epileptics hope will resonate not only in people’s ears, but also in their minds.

“We hope by using music as an education, that we can teach people more about what happens when there’s a seizure,” McGee said. “Hopefully, we can dismiss some of the mystery and stigma that’s attached to people having seizures.”