Freezing keyboard on a MacBookPro

Okay, so i've been having some issues with my built in keyboard. When i use adobe illustrator, or any other adobe products, after a while my keyboard freezes up. sometimes for a long time, sometimes it loosens up again, other times i have to restart the macbook to get my keyboard back. i've been managing well just avoiding my keyboard and restarting every now and again, but this has started to happen the instant i start working with an adobe program. i can't find what's causing it. I'm a total noob at this stuff and i need help, because naturally, this can't go on like this (i'm a design student, i need these programs all the time)

What year MBP?

bought it in 2010.
brand new at the time.

What version OS X?
What version illustrator?
What size is your hard drive and how much free space is left on it?
How much RAM does the machine have?

Keyboard locking up or the application is locking up?
e.g. keyboard shortcuts don't work, but the trackpad and the application are still functioning normally and are usable?

osx 10.6.8

happened on both cs6 and cs5 products.
500 gb hard drive
180 gb available
4 gb of ram, however free ram goes down pretty fast.

the application doesn't lock up it's usually only the alphanumerical keys, but recently the spacebar, backspace and buttons like that have started freezing up aswell.
when i open keyboard viewer i can still type using my trackpad, but if i'd press "a" for example it doesn't show up on the keyboard viewer.

trackpad always works fine

Don't see anything there that would cause it - most often the issue is liquid has been spilled into at some point in the past - has that happened with this machine?

Although, if it only happens with Adobe apps and nothing else, might try their forums and see if anyone else is reporting this issue.

Is there a possibility that you use your Adobe software so extensively compared to other applications that an intermittent keyboard fault could appear to be only Adobe related?

If keyboard viewer shows a defective key that would have nothing to do with an Adobe issue, more likely a keyboard/top case fault.

that might actually be possible.
But it only seems to happen when i work with adobe's programs.

i will take a look at the adobe forums too