The Migraine Experience (in VR)

I haven’t written about migraine here for a while, but watching a video yesterday prompted me to post.

Excedrin recently started a campaign known as “The Migraine Experience”. They found four migraine sufferers, and got them together with virtual reality (VR) experts to actually recreate their migraine attacks in VR.

Of course there’s only so much that you can reproduce (legally) with this kind of technology, so the focus was on visual aura (the visual hallucinations such as flashing lights and zig zags that some migraine patients see), and sensitivity to light (which is much more common in migraine) (and yes, I’ve experienced both of these). The result was quite remarkable.

Take a look at this video, a summary of the results. For videos focusing on each of the four stories, check out the Migraine Experience.