Epilepsy
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40 free Epilepsy trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Epilepsy is one of the most common serious conditions of the brain, and one of the most misunderstood. For most of history it was explained by spirits, curses and the moon, and some of the myths about what to do when someone has a seizure are still repeated today. The real story is stranger and more hopeful: a condition with dozens of forms, a long list of treatments and a surprising place in art, sport and popular culture. This quiz covers the ground a curious reader would expect. There are questions on what a seizure is and the different kinds doctors recognise, on the tests used to diagnose epilepsy, and on treatment, from the oldest medicines to diets, implanted devices and brain surgery. Others deal with first aid and common triggers, the ancient and medieval history of the condition, and writers, artists and performers who lived with it. It is written for general readers rather than specialists, so it suits people living with epilepsy and their families, students of nursing, psychology and biology, and anyone revising for a health class or simply curious. Every answer comes with a short explanation, and the questions range from everyday knowledge to a handful of harder ones for those who know the subject well.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which cartoon aired a 1997 episode whose flashing red and blue lights sent hundreds of Japanese children to hospital?
Pokémon
Pokémon never broadcast the episode again after more than 600 viewers were taken to hospital. Only about 3% of people with epilepsy are sensitive to flashing lights.
Q 02Which saint, martyred in third-century Rome, is a patron of people with epilepsy as well as of beekeepers?
Valentine
Saint Valentine was so closely tied to the condition that epilepsy was traditionally known in northern Italy as his malady.
Q 03In ancient Rome, the blood of which wounded men was drunk in the belief that it could cure epilepsy?
Gladiators
Gladiators gave the remedy a long afterlife: for centuries Europeans prized the fresh blood of executed criminals for the same supposed healing power.
Q 04Which colour do supporters wear each 26 March for an epilepsy awareness day begun by a nine-year-old Canadian girl?
Purple
Purple is the international colour for epilepsy, and Cassidy Megan's idea spread fast: a year after her first event, more than 100,000 students took part.
Q 05Which eating plan, later a weight-loss fashion, was first tried at the Mayo Clinic in 1921 to control epilepsy?
Ketogenic diet
The ketogenic diet was built to copy the effects of fasting, an older epilepsy treatment, with meals rich in fat and almost free of carbohydrate.
Q 06According to NHS first-aid advice, what should a bystander do for someone having a convulsive seizure on the ground?
Cushion their head
Cushion their head and move the person only if they are in danger, then turn them onto their side once the convulsions stop. Nothing should ever go in the mouth, fingers included.
Q 07Which Roman general and statesman is thought, from Plutarch's remarks about his sudden fits, to have had epilepsy?
Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar had four recorded episodes that may have been seizures, though no diagnosis made two thousand years later can be certain.
Q 08Which body part does a stubborn first-aid myth claim a person can swallow during a seizure?
Tongue
The tongue cannot be swallowed, and the myth does real harm: forcing an object between a convulsing person's teeth can cause choking or injury.
Q 09From which plant does Epidiolex come, a medicine the FDA approved in 2018 for two severe childhood epilepsies?
Cannabis
Cannabis supplies the cannabidiol in Epidiolex, the first plant-derived form of the compound approved by US and European regulators, and one that is not intoxicating.
Q 10Which Dutch painter was told by a young hospital doctor in Arles that his attacks were a kind of epilepsy?
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh came to suspect epilepsy himself, though what really ailed him is still argued over, with a long list of rival theories.
Q 11Which test, which records brain waves through electrodes on the scalp, is routinely used to help diagnose epilepsy?
EEG
An EEG taken between seizures can look normal even in people who have epilepsy, so the recording may be repeated or run for days in a monitoring unit.
Q 12Henry Molaison could form no new memories after 1953 epilepsy surgery removed most of which brain structure?
Hippocampus
The hippocampus on both sides was largely cut out, and Molaison, known in textbooks only by his initials, was studied by memory researchers until his death in 2008.
Q 13Which word, shared with migraine, do doctors use for the odd smell or rising stomach feeling that warns of a seizure?
Aura
An aura is really a small seizure in its own right, confined to one part of the brain, which is why its form hints at where the trouble starts.
Q 21Which lobe of the brain, vital for long-term memory, is the commonest starting point for focal epilepsy in adults?
Temporal
The temporal lobe gives its seizures a strange flavour, often opening with a rising feeling in the stomach, a sudden wave of fear or an odd taste or smell.
Q 22A pacemaker-like device implanted under the collarbone treats stubborn epilepsy by sending pulses to which nerve?
Vagus
The vagus nerve is normally wired on the left side of the neck, because the right branch helps to control the heart and stimulating it could upset the heartbeat.
Q 23Which band of nerve fibres joining the brain's two halves do surgeons cut to stop severe seizures spreading?
Corpus callosum
Q 14Roughly how many people worldwide have epilepsy, nearly 80% of them in low- and middle-income countries?
50 million
Around 50 million people have epilepsy, and the World Health Organization estimates that up to 70% of them could live free of seizures with proper diagnosis and treatment.
Q 15Which American abolitionist had seizures for the rest of her life after an overseer's thrown weight broke her skull?
Harriet Tubman
Harriet Tubman was hit as a girl by a metal weight aimed at another slave, and took the vivid visions that followed the injury to be messages from God.
Q 16Which Minneapolis pop star, known by a single name, said he was born epileptic and had seizures as a boy?
Prince
Prince recalled telling his mother as a child that he would not be sick any more, because an angel had told him so.
Q 17Which Greek physician argued in On the Sacred Disease that epilepsy came from the brain, not the gods?
Hippocrates
Hippocrates accused those who blamed the gods of spreading ignorance through superstitious magic, and treated the illness as something medicine could address.
Q 18Which Oscar-winning actress starred in First Do No Harm, a 1997 TV film about a boy whose epilepsy is eased by diet?
Meryl Streep
Meryl Streep made the film for director Jim Abrahams, whose own son Charlie's severe epilepsy had been brought under control the same way.
Q 19Which everyday symptom sets off the childhood seizures that mostly strike between six months and five years of age?
Fever
Fever is the trigger, which is why doctors call them febrile seizures, and frightening as they look, most children simply outgrow them without going on to develop epilepsy.
Q 20After how long does NHS first-aid advice say a continuing seizure needs an ambulance?
5 minutes
5 minutes is the cut-off because most seizures stop by themselves in under two, and one that runs on can cause lasting harm to the brain.
Cutting the corpus callosum was first tried in the 1940s, and the patients who had it became famous in psychology as the split-brain cases.
Q 24Which epilepsy drug, once only a lab solvent, is tightly restricted because it can cause birth defects in pregnancy?
Valproate
Valproate showed its power by accident in 1962, when a French researcher was using it merely as the liquid to carry other compounds he was testing.
Q 25Which French term was long the everyday name for a tonic-clonic seizure, the most dramatic convulsive kind?
Grand mal
Grand mal is French for great sickness, an echo of the great disease, the plain label some ancient Greek doctors preferred to calling the condition sacred.
Q 26Which type of seizure, most common in children, shows as brief staring spells that are often mistaken for inattention?
Absence
Absence seizures can strike anywhere from a few to hundreds of times a day, so a child may struggle to concentrate at school long before anyone suspects epilepsy.
Q 27Which parasite, spread by poor sanitation, does the WHO call the most frequent preventable cause of epilepsy?
Pork tapeworm
The pork tapeworm does its damage when its larvae lodge in the brain, and it is blamed for about 30% of epilepsy cases in the countries where it is entrenched.
Q 28Which Russian novelist, who had epilepsy himself, wrote his own seizures into the novel The Idiot?
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Fyodor Dostoevsky poured his own ordeals into the book, from his seizures to the mock execution he once faced, and had four attacks in a single month in 1877.
Q 29Which sudden illness is a major cause of epilepsy in older adults, with up to one survivor in ten developing it?
Stroke
Stroke most often brings on epilepsy within the first few years, and the risk is highest after severe bleeds that damage the brain's outer layer, the cortex.
Q 30Which Olympic host city pulled animated footage from its jagged logo's launch after viewers reported seizures?
London
London organisers stressed that the logo itself was not to blame: the offending clip showed a diver entering a pool with a multi-coloured ripple effect.