All In The Mind presents ... Sum of All Parts
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What is the premise of the “Sum of All Parts” episode and who is the host?
Hi, Lynne Malcolm here with a bonus program for you this week. It comes from the ABC's podcast, Some of All Parts. If you haven't subscribed, you can catch up with the series now. Here's a fascinating recent episode I want to share with you. It's a story about a young man with an unusual type of epilepsy where he hears what are called musical auras whenever he has a seizure. This is Joel Werner, the producer of some of all parts, with his story, The Sound of Seizure.
Brant Guishard has heard the music for as long as he can remember.
The earliest memory I have was sitting on a bed in my room and enjoying a run of music as it went by me. waving my hands as it just run through and I didn't recognise it for what it was at the time. I listened to it, it finished and I asked my friend who was sitting next to me watching the television of Healing Board since we had absolutely nothing to do and I asked him, did you hear that? And he said, what? I asked him for the music. And he said, what music? It made me realise I was the only one who was hearing that. Nobody else was hearing this. This was all mine.
That was Brandt's first encounter with what he calls the music. And in the 30 years since, it's something that he's heard multiple times every day.
The music starts by warping the sounds and things I hear. then it adds its own rhythm and starts becoming stronger within my head. The pattern is never the same. It is never the same. It is always unique. Every time a collection of repetitive noises together, warping together the noises around me into a rhythm, Often taking any song I've heard and putting that into the mix. Anything I reach for in my memory, that will be placed into the mix as well. All the sounds, even speaking, is part of the music. It's why I become absolutely still sometimes. is because I don't want to make noise myself. I stop any noise I'm hearing if I can, and I stop moving myself,
because that has the best chance of slowing it down a little
bit.
It's partially in my control in that I reach and try to control where it goes. It's like sitting in a car without having any brakes and having the accelerator tied down but you've got the hands on the steering wheel. You can control where it goes but you can't stop it.
How does Brant (Brandt) describe his first experience with musical auras during a seizure?
Then I start developing a partial seizure having part of my body losing control and after this I will develop into a full seizure but I will stay fully conscious at this point although it will not look like I am I will be on the ground with a grand mal as most people think epilepsy is but after this point it will continue developing and past that point
I will lose consciousness. Brandt has epilepsy, and it's a particular type of epilepsy where he hears what are called musical
auras. So when Brandt has that music that he hears, that's actually the beginning of a seizure. It's a small seizure, as he told you. But if it doesn't progress to involve more of his brain, he remains aware, and there's nothing to see. Only Brandt can tell us about it.
Professor Ingrid Scheffer is Brandt's neurologist and a world-leading epilepsy researcher.
We don't really understand why one seizure progresses and another doesn't, except that we do know that almost everyone with epilepsy is more likely to have seizures if they're tired or stressed. And so you might have some auras, but then they might progress if you're more tired or stressed. Or sometimes people will build up. They'll have a run of auras, which sort of heralds the fact that they're going to go into the bigger seizure.
There are a few different types of epilepsy that are related to sound, like musicogenic epilepsy. Where music may
trigger a seizure.
Or reflex epilepsy.
Where, say, a very loud noise may trigger a seizure. There's a young lady I look after who, if there's a loud noise as she's walking along the street, will suddenly have a tonic seizure and fall to the ground. So she actually has to wear headphones all the time to try and dull down the sounds around her so she doesn't get a surprise.
But musical auras like Brandt experiences are unusual, like
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