this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2024
125 points (100.0% liked)
science
14117 readers
1012 users here now
just science related topics. please contribute
note: clickbait sources/headlines aren't liked generally. I've posted crap sources and later deleted or edit to improve after complaints. whoops, sry
Rule 1) Be kind.
lemmy.world rules: https://mastodon.world/about
I don't screen everything, lrn2scroll
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Interesting find, apparently protein levels in spinal fluid vary pretty drastically after an aural migraine (where the pain comes after aura).
They say the aura's are a reaction to total neural activity shutdown, but I have never consciously experienced that before an aura. I would expect to have deja vu after such an event
Brain blackout is kind of a dramatic word. I'm pretty sure the article is trying to refer to cortical spreading depression.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nrneurol.2013.192
This is a wave of decreased activity going across the brain. It's not the whole brain though, just a portion, and it tends to happen more often in the posterior brain than anterior. That's why visual and other sensory auras (posterior brain) auras are more common than motor/weakness auras (anterior brain). The visual aura itself is the spreading wave of decreased activity going across the brain. It happens in primary visual cortex, primarily dealing with lines and colors. Visual space is represented radially on the brain, so it can often be circular. The "fortifications" or lines on the edges some people see come from the fact that it's neurons that deal with line detection. Pain usually follows shortly after, but we aren't exactly sure how that works, and this article was posing a possible mechanism to help link these. The main bulk of the visual aura where it's grey, blurry, and indistinct is the decreased activity itself in the visual cortex. The area can get larger as the wave spreads.
Deja vu or jamais vu have been reported with migraines, though that's a very rare aura in comparison. It's all depending on what parts of the brain are involved with the cortical spreading depression for that migraine aura for that person in terms of what symptom will happen. Deja vu would be more temporal lobe. Temporal lobe is the most common localization for focal epilepsies. So deja vu as a symptom of a neurologic disease would more commonly be seen with seizures (focal seizures are sometimes called auras too, which gets confusing but are inherently different from what is happening in a migraine). But don't worry, most deja vu is nothing to worry about.
I never knew about how CSD spreads but that makes sense. I don't see artifacts with my auras. Generally everything becomes too bright and too loud all at once. I know I'm having a bad one if I start writing backwards (I will write the second letter of every word first) or slurring my speech. Thankfully I don't get super bad ones as much anymore.
Ouf! Lucky for us, both our migraine severity seems to lessen over time. My brother had symptoms more like yours, speech slurring or limb movement impediment. Because theses are also seizure symptoms, we had to go to the first aid a bunch on false alarms, but luckily it was always 'just' a crazy migraine.