EEG Test

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Anyone else here get lots of electroencephalogram (EEG) tests as a kid?
(Mine had nothing to do with seizures which I never had a problem with. Mine were for testing for autism).

This could have been me in the 70's:

I had a 3 day long glued-to-the-wall EEG testing thing back in November and a few more before that. that was just because they thought I had epilepsy though.

I have never had an EEG but I have had a seizure before
maybe I should get one

Yes, but just once (or twice?), during the testing for AS. Got my first MRI then too as the closing test and that was the definite answer to that. Now I'm curious how many others got MRIs as I must have been one of the first, according to how new that is? Or is it? (helps coming from a country where things like that are free).

I had a week-long EEG test back ing January 2012 for suspected epilepsy, which turned out to be PNES. All in all, it was a terrible experience and I hope I never have to endure one again.

I had 5 EEGs in my life and one of them was as a child.
All of them were just for approx. 20 min.

As a child I was in a hospital because I had stomach problems and they wanted to check that it's not neurological.
Two I had as a grown up, because I went in a psychiatric ward and they check routiniced and two I had because I had a blepharospasm and they wanted to check that I have no seizures.

I had grand mal style seizures as a child aged 12 (with recorded epsides of 'fainting' younger than that on my medical records, and my mum told me as a baby I would go weird and do some odd eye rolling thing). I had an abnormal EEG. They described it as epileptiform episodes. They never flagged it as anything to do with autism (I was diagnosed only recently). Recently I got a copy of my EEG results and they correlate with those of autistic children according to research But no-one ever investigated autism when I was a child.

What exactly does Autism have to do with EEGs?

I've had 2, yes. One was for epilepsy which was for 24 hours. I hated it. My mum stayed with me in the hospital overnight and went to the hospital shop to get some food. When she returned, I was tangled up in the wires.

I had one a few years ago to test the electrical activity in my eyes. I had the wires on my head and then a few around my eyes. That was so uncomfortable.

Two reasons:
1) to check up that the behaviour doesn't have other reasons
2) many autistics also have epilepsy

Yeah, they did those too. Or the 70's equivalent. I often mention all the extreme testing and then the schools for autistic kids I was sent to, as a preamble to saying I have autism. People usually don't doubt that I have it after that preamble. Usually the response is along the lines of "wow I guess you've made a lot of progress". Which is true.
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I had one, and it was supposed to include a sleep time, but that was a BIG mistake! That was how I discovered that anesthetics and sedatives work opposite on me from other people. They gave me a sedative (Medazolam, I think), and it made my heart race, and I began to hallucinate, got violent, began racing around the hospital and tried to break into an elevator shaft by mistake because I thought Hitler was there, and trying to kill me. I was only 8 years old. It took about a week before I could sleep after that, and normally I have no issues falling asleep easily. To this day, any kind of pain pill or sedative, sends me into manic orbit, but Adderall and coffee put me sound-asleep.

Albeit off-topic, that is my memory of my EEG, and as far as why it was ordered, I believe it was to determine if there was any neurological problem or other things in the brain waves that could have caused my unusual behavior in general. It did not have any bearing on my autism diagnosis years later, however.

Charles

I'm also susceptible to mania from tranquilizers, such as the gas that dentists use. Coffee also makes me sleepy vs jittery, people have found it odd when I drink it late in the day or at night.

I've never had an EEG, or pretty much anything aside from physicals, which is when I was in school. I've read research that they can diagnose ASD with 90% accuracy with them (there was a new thread on here either in general or news on this last week I think), but it hasn't been put into practice.

I'm also a bit like that, opposite effects. My boyfriend too. We drink coffee 24/7

Well now we know who they practiced on Maybe there isn't an "official ASD EEG test" to take, but it's def already used to look for autism. They just had to figure out what to look for.

I guess I'll have to begin doing that when coming out of the AS-closet but it's such a long story
MRI must have been really really new then, wow
So they tested you a lot too, do you know if it was for research or what? I can almost bet it was for research whether they told you or not. Maybe you're the ur-aspie

I've had tons of eegs for my seizures. Once I had one for a whole week until I had a couple of seizures. I've never really thought they were too bad. The only bad thing about it was that I couldn't was my hair for the entire week.