Some people experience synesthesia, extreme euphoria, and even orgasm at the onset of a seizure. The nature of this aura differs greatly from patient to patient. They are usually preceded by something called an “aura,” a sort of minor foreshock lasting anything up to a couple of minutes before the main event begins. Seizures, or fits, occur after an unanticipated electrical discharge in the brain. Until, that is, the afternoon that I woke up on the kitchen floor with two black eyes after suffering my first recorded seizure. Before my diagnosis I appeared fit and healthy: I was in my mid-30s and displayed absolutely no symptoms. Until, that is, they fail.įor the past five years I have been suffering epileptic seizures resulting from the growth and eventual removal of a lemon-size tumor from the right-hand side of my brain. Most of the time memory systems run quietly in the background as we go about the business of everyday life. Jingles from old television ads, the name of the second-to-last president, the punch line to a joke: Memories are the constituent parts of individual identities.
#FEELINGS OF DEJA VU AND SEIZURES HOW TO#
Whether it’s how to tie a shoelace or recalling your first day at school, memories make up the autobiographical map that helps us navigate the present day. He saw a newborn baby as a kind of empty ledger, one that is gradually filled as the child grows and accumulates knowledge and experience. One of the most fundamental doctrines of Western philosophy was established by Aristotle. What I was experiencing was an extreme form of a very common mental illusion: déjà vu. The problem was that it never actually happened. It was a pleasant and extremely vivid recollection. I felt warm sunlight on the back of my neck and watched as birds wheeled and floated above me. I could hear the sway of the wheat ears as a gentle breeze brushed through them. The people around me vanished and I found myself lying on a tartan picnic blanket amid a field of high golden wheat. I was lounging under a tree in a packed East London park when I experienced a sudden feeling of vertigo, followed immediately by an overwhelming and intense sense of familiarity. One drab afternoon a few years ago something very unusual happened to me.
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