Jake Young is a MD/PhD student at Mount Sinai School of Medicine focusing in Neuroscience. He is due to graduate in 2032. He received a BS and a MS in Biological Sciences from Stanford University -- where he spent most of his time drinking heavily and building vegetable catapults instead of learning information that would now be eminently useful. When he is not failing terrifically to perform his sworn duties, he enjoys watching bad movies, ethnic food, and running.
Pure Pedantry is a blog about science -- social sciences and otherwise -- as well as academic and scientific culture. No one can live on science alone, so I also like to dwell on pop culture, periodically explore the humanities, and indulge in other types of geeky goodness.
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Category: Art • Neurological disease
Posted on: March 4, 2008 11:29 AM, by Jake Young
The NYTimes has a slide show of "migraine" art provided by Oliver Sacks from his book Migraine. They attempt to illustrate what a migraine aura looks like.
Neat. I would put one up on my wall if I didn't feel so horrible that it was the pictorial prelude to someone's intense pain.
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Comments
The first time I opened Sacks' book, I dropped it. The pictures were familiar.
Posted by: T. Kordas | March 4, 2008 12:51 PM
It's hard for me to look at these. Even thinking about what my pre-migraine aura looks like makes me start to feel ill.
Posted by: Davis | March 4, 2008 1:53 PM
So now we know where Cubism came from...
Posted by: Lassi Hippelinen | March 4, 2008 2:18 PM
I always wondered what other people's auras looked like. Mine are different from these--enough similarity to recognize a few, though.
Posted by: Anon | March 4, 2008 2:26 PM
Very interesting. I found some of the images familiar and others merely suggestive. I have suffered migraines, but after a particularly bad one (for me - my mother and my brother both had much worse) I have never actually had the headache. I get fairly frequently get a blind spot, then the aura, and then perhaps a mild headache unless I take ibuprofen. But the next day I have what I call a hangover. Not every aura is followed by a headache, and not every migraine is preceded by an aura. The other interesting thing is that although migraines usually decrease with age, my auras have, if anything, increased with age.
Posted by: Mark P | March 4, 2008 3:25 PM