Seizures induced by nursery rhymes and children's games

We report the case of a 20 years aged male patient with seizures induced by nursery rhymes and children’s games. Seizures were precipitated by various triggers, including thinking to a children’s rhyme, to a children’s game, to the action of giving a kiss with a hand. Among the above triggers, only the last one was able to induce a seizure during our observation, characterised by jerking of the upper limbs and loss of consciousness with a quick recovery. The electroclinical features were of a brief paroxysm and diffuse theta/delta activity on electroencephalogram, with frontal maximal expression. The playful aspect and the reference to childhood intrinsically associated with an emotional component seem to be the true feature all the stimuli have in common and therefore this form could be classified as an emotional one. To our knowledge seizures precipitated by these kind of stimuli have never before been reported.