References to spastic, seizure inducing cartoons and videos games are rife in pop culture — The Simpsons spoof is pretty much seminal — but it’s easy to forget that, in the early days of gaming, all those weird bleeps and bloops in arcades were occasionally inducing seizures in kids and teens. It’s a rare occurrence, only happening in a small percentage of photosensitive epileptics, but it’s interesting to see how, as video game popularity rose in the early 80s, the medicine world tried to keep up with the new phenomenon.That mix of researchers striving to find the source of youngsters’ seizures while simultaneously navigating the blooming world of video games resulted in perhaps the greatest medical paper title of all time: “Dark Warrior epilepsy,” published in 1982 by T. K. Daneshmend and M. J. Campbell. Yes, it references Dark Warriors, an 1981 arcade game similar to Space Invaders that was notable for featuring voice emulation.We can thank Dr. Vaughan Bell at Mindhacks for digging up the paper, which is a case study of a 17 year old girl who plays about two hours of video games a day. From the positively wonderful abstract:The world-wide explosion of video games and the attendant problems have been unnoticed by the medical profession, except by doctors who are addicted to these games and deny that such a problem exists. Single cases of Space Invader wrist tendonitis and Space Invader epilepsy have, however, recently been reported.Bell digs in deeper to pull out what he calls one of “neuroscience’s great paragraphs”:The term Space Invader epilepsy is, in fact, a misnomer, since no cases have been reported with the Space Invader video game itself. We suggest, therefore, that Astro Fighter and Dark Warrior epilepsy be classified under "electronic space war video game epilepsy" and this as a special category of photoconvulsive epilepsy. Video games other than space war games – for example, Super Bug and Munch Man – appear to be less epileptogenic. Electronic space war video game epilepsy has yet to be reported with Defender, Space Fury, Lunar Rescue, or Asteroids war games.Video game studies are usually pretty contentious, especially in recent years when the focus has been on trying to study a potential correlation between violent video games and brain function. (These studies are occasionally funded by people with a vested interest in the outcome.) But what’s really great about the Dark Warrior paper is the fact that, in the first paragraph, the authors are already calling out other researchers who are apparently video game addicts/apologists. I mean, holy cow, that’s a pretty aggressive statement.With the first reported case of video game-induced epileptic seizure apparently only having been reported in 1981, it’s pretty great to see just how in-depth some researchers were getting in just a short time. Better yet, it’s fascinating to see that, for at least thirty years now, video games have been stirring up trouble in medical literature.Follow Derek Mead on Twitter: @drderekmead.
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