Joana loves sitcoms. While watching her boyfriend’s favourite series on the sofa, she had her first epileptic seizure. From that moment on a lot of things changed in her life. At work, in the way she sees herself, in her relationship with her boyfriend. Jorge is Joana’s boyfriend. The coincidence in the initial letter of their names seems to have been just that, a coincidence. The name of the doctor who accompanies Joana is no coincidence, it is different, it begins with M. Based on real testimonies, we imagined the following story, with people who have, treat and research epilepsy.

In “The Epilepsy Algorithm” coincidences exist, but there are, above all, probabilities. It is a sufficient condition that the probability of something happening is greater than zero for it to may actually happen – be it having epilepsy, winning the Euro Millions, or ending a relationship. Reality is the realisation, or not, of these probabilities.

Jorge’s challenge, as a computer scientist, is to try and capture the workings of Joana’s brain in an algorithm, to try and predict the timing of her seizures. But the human brain has 86 billion neurons, permanently making and undoing connections. Just as it is not easy to accurately predict a crisis, it is also not easy to control which direction moves the heart we have in our head.