migraine, migraine aura without pain

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[quote="BirdInFlight"]I get painless "aura migraines"! !

.."geometric shapes that kind of dance/sparkle in movement.."

Same for me. They are very infrequent and last about half an hour. The visual illusion of the sparkles dancing only takes place in the outer peripheral vision area of my right eye. I had my last one about 10 years ago.

I was under intense stress then from a managerial bully at work, so it could well have been stress related.

When I was in my late teens I had intense migraines of the conventional kind - a vice-like ring around my head, severe vomiting, unable to eat anything for days, loud sounds and intense light were unbearable. Then they just stopped. I have never had a conventional migraine in the many decades since - just occasional episodes of the dancing light shapes in different colours. I quite like the halo effect, though only once I knew what it was, a painless form of migraine.

This has happened to me several times but much less than once per year.

The last time, I was sitting at the computer at home and searched for "aura without migraine" and found a graphic that looked EXACTLY like what I was seeing at the time, in fact it was superimposed on a picture of a computer.

I do think it's related to stress. One time it happened on my first day at a new job.

I did a bit of googling and found that migraine is a relatively common co morbidity with ASDs. One study of autistic children showed they were 2.2 times more likely to have frequent severe headaches or migraines. Other sources just list it as common among autistics.

That makes sense-as autism is a neurological disorder.

I get those too, but thankfully so far there's never been a headache or anything else but the visual disturbance. I've heard it called "silent migraine." I'm also very lucky that it barely interferes with my ability to see. I'd even be unlikely to have to pull over if I was driving. What happens is that I first notice a very small area in my field of vision, fairly close to the centre, that looks almost as if it's being viewed through a flawed piece of glass. It's very subtle at first. It slowly grows until it's a large, brightly-glittering zig-zagging semicircle, but the saving grace is that as it thus grows and intensifies, it also moves away from the centre of vision, so by the time it's grown to full size, it's located round the edge of my visual field, so there's never a time when I can't see.

I find them annoying, but I'm mostly just grateful that it's not worse than it is. They started when I was in my 40s. At first I thought I might have a brain tumour, until I found a description on the Web that exactly matched my own symptoms. My mother used to get real migraines, and it was clear that she really suffered with them. So I think I've got away very lightly, so far at least. I only get a few of them per year on average.

I also get those painless migraines with the visual aura. Luckily, they last 40 minutes almost like clockwork, so I know I won't be functionally blind for too long. It was kind of weird when I heard someone with the classic painful-vomit-inducing type describe what they go through. For me, there's no discomfort at all, other than the annoyance of not being able to see for a little while.

I read that the reason the scotoma(sp?) starts out as a point and expands into rings has to do with a wave "spreading depression" of the neurons in the visual cortex. Apparently, migraines are a little like a seizure. So, as the wave moves/expands through your brain it sort of maps the topology of your visual cortex and shows it to you.

Last month I sought medical help because I had numbness in my right arm and couldn't manipulate my fingers as normal. The consultant neurologist said it was probably just due to a migraine. I told him that I had no migraine, no pain in my head, no halo, and he said that migraine can manifest as numbness in the limbs without other symptoms. That was a huge surprise to me. However the numbness and inability to use my fingers normally was accompanied by extreme dizziness and impaired stability - far more likely to be a mini-stroke I would have thought, especially as I have had mini strokes before, confirmed by MRI. He is a man of very dogmatic opinions so I cancelled my follow up with him as I felt it was a waste of time.

Really sorry to hear this. I hope it's not serious and doesn't come back to often. I had a doctor tell me with absolute confidence that the lightheaded feelings I was getting had no physical cause, had to be psychosomatic and that I should see a shrink to get them treated. A year later I found out that I was asthmatic. It turns out that low blood oxygen isn't psychosomatic--but also not something the first doc bothered to check, because it didn't fit with his dogmatic opinions.

Hope you are feeling well and have a Happy Easter.

I get much the same. Except that I also get ocular pain which does not correspond with the aura. Also the aura is just as likely to shrink or vanish as expand.

I have an aura just starting now. So much for being able to see clearly for the next 30 minutes.

Now at maximum -- a giant shimmering sickle taking up the left side of my field of vision.

I'm not sure if they're related to autism, as migraines run in my family, even among the NT's, and among my mom's side. I'm saying that because my mom has had them on occasion, and my brother even has a prescription medication he takes when he gets the aura. My brother has epilepsy, but that was because of a head injury when he was in a bad car accident when he was in high school.

I get classical painful migraines (photophobia, nausea etc.), sometimes with associated visual auras. This is commonly in the form of half my vision disappearing (I would only be able to read half a word, the second half would just seem to be blank page) or seeing pulsing dots or shapes. I also seem to become strange in behaviour (finding everything funny, making jokes, which I don't usually do), but I don't know why this is. I used to get migraines much more when I was 10-11-ish - almost every day - but it is much less common now. I still sometimes have partial migraines (aura, perhaps a little pain), but usually get to bed before it gets too bad, and am better in the morning. Nobody else in my family has ever had one (to my knowledge).

I get frequent migraines, they always have the aura and are always painful combined with insane hypersensitivities. They last between 4-10 hours and the next day or two I'm left with a dull headache and sensory hell I probably only had 4 of them last year, but they have been as frequent as once a week for a couple months. My migraines always incapacitates me and I must be in a dark, quiet room during one. The only thing that has ever helped them is weed. It doesn't take the pain away but I don't whimper nearly as much and sometimes I fall asleep after a couple hours.

My auras lasts about 45 minutes. It starts out as a weird feeling that things don't look right. Soon I'll notice a blind spot that will get bigger and bigger until most of my vision is blocked by it. When it's large, the aura is very colorful and sparkly.

And here we go again. Second one this month.

So much for my plan to finish proofreading a paper in the next half hour.

Ouch, I know what those ones are like.