A German man was solving his Sudoku puzzles when suddenly he developed clonic seizures, said scientists from the University of Munich. The details on the medical health of the patient were published in the journal JAMA Neurology.

The young man, also a physical education student survived after being deprived of oxygen for almost 15 minutes. He developed muscle jerks when he tried to speak and walk, said scientists.

He developed clonic seizures at the hospital in his left arm that was not injured in the accident. As per experts, clonic seizures include repeated jerking of the muscles. The patients said when he stopped trying to solve the puzzle, the seizures stopped.

Dr. Berend Feddersen and colleagues explained in their report that the patient experienced reflex epilepsy which is characterize by seizures that are trigged by any external stimuli. Some of these external stimuli might include reading, making calculations, touching, a warm bath, playing games, noise, and in this case, the sudoku puzzle acted as external stimuli.

In order to solve a sudoku puzzle digit from 1 to 9 needs have to appear in each of 9 vertical columns, in each of 9 horizontal rows, and in each of 9 boxes.

The patient tried to solve the puzzle by visualizing solutions in 3D, but as his brain was damaged during the accident, solving the puzzle triggered reflex epilepsy, showed report.

Mayo Clinic neurologist Dr. Elson So, an epilepsy specialist said “We can look at the brain as a network system. There are some centers for mathematical concepts and others for language. The authors have shown with some evidence that the fibers connecting the centers were damaged”