Scintillating Scotoma

I had one of these yesterday for the first time in my life. I felt perfectly fine but was unable to read text on my monitor for a few minutes. It was kind of scary, thought I might be having a stroke. From what I've read it looks like I suffered a migraine without experiencing pain.

Here is a good representation of what I experienced, but it was over a period of about 20 minutes.

[video=youtube;gV_37cao38U]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gV_37cao38U[/video]

A few hours before the incident I had a lunch which contained MSG, which seems to be a common trigger.

Anyone else experience these? I can imagine how I would have felt if I had coincidentally been tripping or really stoned while this happened.

I get it, sometimes blindingly so. My edges are jaggy but so bright! Doctor says it's a form of migraine without the headache, indeed.

It takes a while to go by and I will pull over from driving, when it happens. Fortunately if doesn't happen very often. And, I had not heard of the MSG links. thx

I don't know how he represented that on a video camera, but seems correct, but, too dim. If he had played with the white balance and taken it to very bright, low contrast, that is what I see. Starts on the left, gets bigger and flashing brighter moves to the right eye, always a jagged flashing segment, never the full circle. Weird, huh?

I get severe headaches that seem to straddle the frontier between cluster and migraine. i get some interesting scotomata at times. I know I'm in trouble when I move from bright to dark, and lambent purple abalone-shapes creep across the visual field.

For some interesting migraine art, have you seen Oliver Sacks' book Migraine? I own a copy. cn

Mine often look like this, and do their thing in a remarkable fifteen seconds.

I haven't thought about this in years, but I used to get this BAD in my 20s. Mine was followed by crippling pain. It would start off as a small, dark spot similar to when someone takes your picture. The spot would grow slowly until I was completely blind in the eye in which it originated. From that point, I had about 20 minutes to get somewhere safe. When my vision returned it felt like getting the feeling back after your leg falls asleep, and the intense pain would set in. I used to try to knock myself out with liquor to escape the pain, I could down 15 advil with no effect. I'd eventually cry and fall asleep, and all would be well when I awoke. At the worst, this would happen every couple of months, but I haven't had one in about 15 years. Hope it was a one time thing, Heis...