Migraine Aura Symptoms

Video Transcript

"I'm Alexander Mauskop, director of the New York Headache Center. Migraine aura symptoms. Migraine aura is something that precedes the headache that is typically visual aura is what people experience. Majority of people have visual aura and usually it's twenty-thirty minutes, up to an hour before the headache begins and very typical presentation as spots or lights, or zig-zags in front of your eye, usually on the side of your visual field and then it moves in over a period of thirty minutes, goes all the way to the middle, then clears and then you get the headache. In some people, it's both sides at the same time, sometimes it's half of each eye, some it is tunnel vision, there are many different ways people present with this visual aura. Sometimes it's beautiful, scintillating, scotomata we call it, flashing lights, sometimes it's just blurred vision and you cannot see, you cannot do anything and some people actually are disturbed by the aura more than by the headache itself because the aura makes them feel sick. For some people, aura is a good thing because they know the headache is coming in thirty minutes so they can take a pill and prevent the headache from coming in the first place. Other types of auras are sensory aura where you have numbness on one side of your body for thirty minutes, sometimes it follows the visual aura. First the visual aura, then the sensory aura, then you get a headache. Some there's just sensory aura meaning that you develop numbness. It sometimes creeps up the arm into the face or the whole body gets numb and then you get the headache."