An adolescent with juvenile myoclonic epilepsy experienced brief, involuntary urges to touch her forehead, triggered by a strange sensation inside her head. Video-EEG recordings showed these movements always followed diffuse generalized spike-and-wave bursts (GSWBs) lasting one to three seconds. The patient described the sensation as a "blip on a screen," suggesting she could detect the impact of the GSWBs on her stream of consciousness. This case supports the idea that some patients perceive their own EEG discharges, echoing the "blip syndrome" described by neurologist James W. Lance thirty years ago, and contributes to debates about the cognitive effects of interictal discharges.
Intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG) can be used to compare brain activity during mind wandering, mindfulness meditation, and hypnosis. In three patients new to meditation and hypnosis, widespread amplitude modulations were common across all three states, especially in low-frequency bands (delta, theta, alpha) with positively correlated activity. Unique connectivity patterns for each state predominated in the gamma band, where about one-third of correlations were negative. The findings suggest iEEG is feasible for directly comparing these states and that gamma-band activity warrants further investigation.