MOLI VIEW™

Friday the 13th is upon us, but it's hard to imagine anybody having worse luck than Stacey Gayle of Queens, New York.

In 2005, at the age of 22, Gayle started experiencing sudden and inexplicable epileptic seizures. Numerous tests failed to produce any reason for the episodes and medical treatments proved ineffective. It was summertime in New York and, as usual, music was booming from stoops and street corners all over her neighborhood. Eventually it began to dawn on Gayle that, every time her brain and body would seize, Sean Paul's hit dance track "Temperature" had been playing in the background.

And it wasn't just "Temperature." Rihanna's ubiquitous "Umbrella" and Sean Kingston's "Beautiful Girls" were also sending her into uncontrollable convulsions. Eventually, even the drums in her church choir and the ringtones on cell phones would bring on an attack.

"Life just turns upside down when you take music out of it," Gayle told Scientific American in an article about her condition that ran earlier this week. "I remember sitting outside of stores in the mall and crying because I can't even go shopping or sit in a restaurant and eat."

When it was revealed to Gayle that the only possible solution to her problem (a rare affliction called "musicogenic epilepsy") was brain surgery, she balked. Treatment would require removing a part of her hippocampus — the area of the brain responsible for emotional memory and retention of past experiences. Doctors warned of the potential for partial memory loss and Gayle opted out. She retreated to her former home in Canada and attempted to live "music free." After months of being homebound and depressed, she finally gave in.

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