Then, behind the brightness came a blindness, an expanding emptiness in the field of vision, and soon I could see almost nothing on my left side. It expanded, becoming an enormous shimmering semicircle stretching from the ground to the sky, with sharp zigzagging borders, and brilliant blue and orange colors. When I was three or four years old, playing in the garden one day, a brilliant shimmering light suddenly appeared to my left-dazzlingly bright, almost as bright as the sun. Writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks described his first episode like this:

It’s even been proposed that migraine with aura could have inspired the first cave paintings. “Visual aura has inspired great art and writing, from the fantastical work of Lewis Carroll (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland) to the powerful religious art of Hildegard of Bingen, among others,” says Dr. Inspiration for Literary and Visual ArtsĪlthough scary for first-timers, visual auras like scintillating scotomas have provided creative fodder for a number of artists. Sequence and duration of symptoms are key for helping your doctor determine whether it's migraine with aura or a more serious condition. However, the slowness in movement experienced both visually and across the skin is a distinguishing factor of migraine aura because when linked to seizures and strokes, the symptoms progress rapidly instead. One can also experience dysphasia (slurred speech) and phantom smells during the aura stage.įor those first experiencing an aura event, it can produce a great deal of anxiety over what is happening to them, and even warrant concern that it is a stroke. Scintillating scotoma symptoms can be simultaneously paired with other sensory disturbances like a slow wave of pins and needles or numbness sensations across the face, hands, and/or limbs.

Scintillating scotomas and phosphenes (geometric forms, sparks, and flashes) are the most commonly reported visual disturbances.Ĭhristopher Gottschalk, MD, FAHS, professor and chief of the Division of General Neurology at Yale Medical School, describes the ocular symptoms of scintillating scotoma as “a combination of flickering, geometric shapes, usually in an arc, described variably as ‘zigzags’ or a ‘kaleidoscope,’ along with a blurred or blacked-out hole in part of someone’s visual field,” which then tends to expand “from a tiny speck to something covering up to half of what you can see.” Add scintillation and you get a “flickering spectrum at the margin of scotoma,” according to the American Headache Society. Shimmering Visual Show: What Scintillating Scotoma Looks LikeĪ scotoma is essentially an area of missing vision, or blind spot, that moves across the visual field.

Here's what you need to know about the visual phenomenon, common symptoms, and how to handle it when it occurs. Scintillating scotomas and retinal migraine are just a few variations of this strange world of visual disturbances. Geometric shapes, shimmering arcs, kaleidoscope colors, and zigzag patterns: Are you hallucinating, taking in a Picasso, or are you experiencing the second phase of a migraine attack? For those with migraine, 38 percent may at some point experience aura, while aura occurs regularly in only 4 percent of patients.

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