As it grows, the central area is grey-out, blurred and “empty.” This is present whether my eyes are closed or open, whether the room is dark or light. Gradually the shape spreads and changes, sometimes C-shaped, but also can be round, oval or geometric. The edges have very sharp points that undulate and flash and grow. It starts with a tiny “blind spot,” which when I realize that it means aura is starting, makes me feel quite anxious and depressed (I call this “down the rabbit hole ” I think Lewis Carroll might have experienced the same thing?) This begins to flicker, very intensely, as bright as the light from arc welding. Have you experienced any of the above disturbances? Or some not listed? Tell us about them!Įver since I was a very young child, I get visual aura with about 10% of my migraines. Although these aura eye symptoms may be an indication of migraine, they may also be related to other conditions.īe sure to talk to your doctor who knows your medical history, and give her as much detail about your symptoms as you can. If you have new symptoms, or your symptoms change, that’s the time to talk to your doctor. But in the mean time, the answer for most people is to treat migraine as a whole. These disturbances are telling us more and more about what migraine is. When the storm reaching parts of your brain that relate to vision, at least some of these types of aura eye symptoms occur. A part of the answer is the cortical spreading depression, a spreading storm of lower activity and hyperactivity that tends to be a part of the migraine chain-reaction. We’re only starting to understand why these migraine auras take place.
There are also changes in perception that go far beyond these kind of aura eye symptoms – such as the perception that things are closer or father away than they appear. The hallucinations may also move with your eye movement.Īlso, there are complex hallucinations, such as seeing numbers and letters, or even animals, people, and imaginary creatures. Most often they will grow over the course of a few minutes. It should also be noted that these hallucinations may be moving. For one thing, patterns may be a combination of the above. This is a very simplified and incomplete list. geometric shapes (polygons, rectangles, triangles, etc).Here are some of the types of aura that migraineurs have described, from Migraine Art: The Migraine Experience from Within: These visual auras typically last only a few minutes, and come right before the headache phase of the attack (if there is a headache phase – see migraine headache aura).īut these aura eye symptoms can vary drastically from person to person.
Migraine aura can be a lot of things, but aura eye symptoms, or specifically visual disturbances, are what most people think of when they think of migraine aura.