OT: Scintillating Scotoma

Thanks for this. That's exactly what it looks and feels like to me.

I had 2 auras last night, 20.50 and 21.30, each lasting about 20 minutes but fortunately I don't get a headache. I get auras about 2 or 3 times per month but I can't pin-point a likely cause as the prevailing conditions are mostly different, although sometimes it occurs if I'm looking down reading something on my lap, so could it be a nerve in my neck?

Fortunately not something I have experienced (touch wood) but nontheless fascinating. Thanks for posting this.

I experienced something like this about 20 years ago. It has never repeated. In my case, there was a semi-transparent crescent with alternating chevrons of cyan and magenta. The chevrons had sharp edges. The colours reversed a few times per second.

it happened about 30 minutes after drinking an extra-large McDonalds diet Sprite, which is not something I normally drink. It faded over the next hour or two.

John

That's really helpful. It's a very good accurate version of what I get.

Bill

Spot on video for me too!

Originally, I would suffer it once every six months or so, quite scary and no idea what was going on. Later, working for a particularly frustrating and stressful company, where a lot of frequent driving was involved - it would show up almost daily. If it came on when driving I would notice a 'feel' before it happened and would find somewhere safe to park, whilst it progressed.

Unlike the video, mine would progress much faster than his and usually I would be over it within 20 minutes. More severe, but more rapid too. Apart from the syptoms shown in the video, I would also sometimes get phycodelic flashing colours, something like the films showing a 'drug trip' of the 60's.

I don't tend ever to suffer headaches, though I do sometimes suffer a light headed / distant feeling instead.

After retiring, the frequency reduced back to every three months, but nothing now for around three years.

John Walliker was thinking very hard :

Yep, had that too, sort of phycodelic colours.

Also about 20 minutes for me and pretty rarely happening. I get a black and white zig-zaggy edge and the area within it goes a little blurry (enough to make it difficult to read a computer screen, but not impossible). I too get a fair bit of warning, so I am not worried about being caught out with it.

SteveW formulated on Wednesday :

The very first episode was of the full on phycodelic variety - early morning, still in bed and I had just woken up. I just remained in bed until it had cleared.

I suffered and ignored it for years, not really knowing quite how to desribe it, until someone suggested it was probably a migraine, then a bit of research found it. Mentioning it to the docs, they seemed uninterested, but they did find my BP was high and put me on medsto reduce it, so worth getting BP checked.

Harry Bloomfield Esq has brought this to us :

One visual issue I do still suffer from very occaisionally, takes the form of seeing some movement, or motion in my periferal vision, if move my eyes. Rather like spotting a fly flying past in the edge of the vision, that can last for days.

As a youngster, I used to be sensivive and could spot the 'floaters', or bubbles in the fluid of the eye. We all have them, but the brain normally cancels them out, or ignores them. If I concentrate on seeing them, I can still see them now sometimes.

My BP was okay last time I was at the docs, allowing for a little bit of white coat syndrome - and not too bad even not allowing for it.

My wife suffered from that, but severely. She couldn't drive, as she'd see cars, coming up to a give-way at a junction and think that they were coming too fast to stop. She couldn't even be a passenger, except with me or my father, as she'd scream out each time this happened and we were the only ones prepared for it and certain not to hit the brakes or swerve.

She also suffered from balance problems.

It took 2-1/2 years of messing around before a Neuro-Opthamologist diagnosed the problem, stating that the signals from eyes and inner ear arrive at different time and the brain has to correct for the timings and that her timing was messed up. It was largely resolved by putting her on Sodium Valproate - the stuff that they use for epilepsy.

Mine stopped when I got my blood pressure under control.

I got some surprising opinions from doctors. A young intern had no idea what it was. His superior was able to educate him, and at least his superior was logical about next steps.

But other doctors were more "thoughts and prayers" than technical analysis. Nobody really wanted to put two plus two together, think about ways the body could press on the optics nerve and so on. Presumably a possible cause could be some plumbing in the brain, in less than pristine condition.

I don't know all the causes, but in my case, the blood pressure fixed it. I had one aura so bad, my vision was completely wiped out for ten minutes (the entire visual field was aura, not just a small percentage). I just stayed in bed until it was over. There is no headache associated with my aura (I don't get migraines).

Paul

My experience as well. I've suffered with this for nigh on twenty years and was diagnosed by my Optician about 5 years ago. Sometimes it's so bad that I need to sit down with my eyes closed until the episode ceases. The Doctors were not too interested, but luckily the Eye professional was. I also suffer with high blood pressure, treated, so there could well be a connection. Peter

Having had gradually diminishing vision, I can confirm all of this.The current theiry is that inherently, the vision system has noise, which is cancelled out by various means, but some people can be sensitive to it in the edges of the visual field where the population of cells is lower and the brain looks for movement, as nobody wants to be eaten by a sneaky predator do they? Anyway now I have very little or no sight left, I am left with the interference, and its as if the volume were turned up and the noise pervades, but the brain still attempts to make it into images, and indeed can be dazzled and get headaches, so don't put much store by it, unless it gets worse. Everyone's vision is pretty naff and its amazing it works at all.

Brian

had Migraine with aura since the 90's

When I used to suffer from bad migraines when I was in my teens, my visual disturbances were like a TV with the saturation turned up and the gamma increased to make shadows and mid-tomes lighter than they should be without maxing-out the highlights. It seemed to affect the whole field of vision, without making local "funnies" such as regions that were out of focus or which were coloured patterns. I did find that if I shut my eyes and covered them (eg with an aye-shade or go into a darkened room), I saw coloured jagged lines. That lasted for several hours and was followed by a day or two of complete exhaustion.

I remember my GP making a boo-boo. When I'd been much younger, I'd been given valium/diazepam as a pre=med when I was having my tonsils out. I became hyperactive (bouncing off the walls of the ward, pressing the cardiac arrest button, wrestling the nurse who came to turn it off). So my GP notes had a big note: "severe reaction to diazepam". When I had a bad migraine in my teens, which had lasted for several days, the GP came to see me and gave me an injection to sedate me to break what he diagnosed as a vicious circle of pain causing stress causing pain. I remember Mum, who was a phrmacy technician, asking him what he was giving me, and (very unusually for him) he was non-committal. Am hour or so later I was bouncing off the walls again. Apparently I said "My head hurts like hell, but I just don't care". Mum rang the GP surgery and asked him to ring back. "Was it by any chance valium that you gave him." The GP said that it was. "Look on the front of his notes..." There was a stunned silence and then a muttered curse and grovelling apology. Whenever I've had an operation since then, I've always listed valium in the "sever reaction" section, just in case.

I get something similar, but it is like having a patch of shimmering like a fresnel lens, but well away from the central part of vision.

Lasts from a few minutes to up to an hour then disappears as mysteriously as it started.

Andrew