Ictal humming and singing

Bartolomei F, McGonigal A, Guye M et al. Clinical and anatomic characteristics of humming and singing in partial epilepsy. Neurology 2007; 69: 490-491.

A French study of musical automatisms in 7/416 epileptics in Marseilles. Humming occurred relatively late during a seizure (mean 23 seconds into one) and always was associated with a loss of consciousness. Patients had right or bilateral hemispheric (temporal) discharge on EEG.

Singing epilepsy was an articulated vocal automatism with musical intonation, with abrupt onset of singing early in the seizure, and complex behavioral changes including euphoric appearance, laughing, gesturing automatisms and dancing like behavior. In 2 cases, this was associated with right frontal seizures originating in the DLF cortex.