Does anybody else get these? SWIM's had them for five years or so. SWIM's never noticed any other physical symptoms associated with them, just the hallucination.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aura_(symptom)

You lucky bastard!

These are the typical migraine auras. What follows after they regress is the severe migraine headache.

But there are people who get the migraine aura without experiencing the headache.

Lucky!? Lucky that SWIM doesn't get the headaches, certainly, but not so lucky in that the auras make it quite difficult to see clearly and sometimes occur while SWIM is driving.

Well hallucinations are usually a nice thing. especially if they are unexpected. But yeah, I understand the case with driving, they however should not last for more that 30-40min. In which case, one just pulls aside and enjoys the view

How long does your aura last for? Have you found the trigger? I know people with migraine and one of them has found the trigger. He needs to exercise intensively for 20-30 min and he's guaranteed an aura and a pretty horrible headache.

Maybe driving / focusing or paying attention is your trigger? This could be quite uncomfortable, since driving's pretty useful thing!

Seems completely random, happens once every one of two months. It's a pretty dull and annoying sort of hallucination. It's kind of like when you look at a bright light and turn away, or when you rub your eyes too hard, or when you stand up too fast. It seems that it can last up to an hour.

It reminds SWIM of how he used to undergo these awkward perceptual changes where all sensory becomes intensely aggravating and speedy. He used to experience this almost every Sunday morning when he was a kid, but it seemed to happen more rarely as he got older; now he can't even remember the last time it happened. This is strange because SWIM didn't experience any emotional aggravation and could behave quite normally. It was purely perceptual aggravation...not quite sure how to explain it.

SWIM knows somebody that is epileptic and is going to show them some pictures of these auras you talk about..and see if they recognize them

As an epileptic I can say that those shown in the first post are certainly more like those in which I experience. I have never seen anything like the twirling rainbow, and as for the black and white sort of cubic ones... If I have a strong seizure (such as an induced seizure, brought uon by strobe light), the sort of repetitive cubic-ness can pervade my very being and soul and turn all that is, including my thoughts in pulsing, spiraling cubes as I twitch and froth. Haha, I think its really really neat when I can remember it (often I just blank out). My fiancee, unfortunately, who lives with me, has taken away my strobe light and thinks it is "wrong" to induce seizures to study them from a unique vantage point.

There was a period in my life where I would take LSD and stare at the reflection of a strobe light in a CD (something about how it reflects light back that makes the seizures much stronger) simply for the experience, to try and understand it. Truly bizarre. I have since grown up and developped a little common sense. Haha. Yeah, I'm THAT intense

I've twice seen these and I find them annoying and afterwards I got mad migraine headache.

But what I saw was much less than from these drawings and it flashes and is just annoying. No fun at all.

What psychoactive would you say a seizure is most similar to?

My migraine symptoms are now generally mainly aura-based. My symptoms are generally aura along with numbness of the hands and mouth and slight dissociation.

Whilst they can be quite pretty and are a walk in the park compared to the full range of symptoms I exhibit with a full-blown migraine attack they certainly get in the way of everyday life as much as 'normal' migraine. I would have extreme difficulty typing this if I had an aura-only migraine at the moment.

Look into acephalgic migraine - it's treatable in much the same way as normal migraine.