Cortical spreading depression rolling across the occipital lobe acts like a slow electrical tsunami shutting down neurons and producing the terrifying jagged visual…

A closer look

Before the skull-splitting agony of a migraine actually hits, your brain decides to put on a terrifying avant-garde light show. Cortical spreading depression is essentially a massive wave of electrical hyper-excitation followed by total neural silence that creeps across the surface of the brain at a glacial pace. When this tsunami rolls over the visual cortex, it produces bizarre, jagged auras and blind spots—the exact same psychedelic visual distortions that inspired 'Alice in Wonderland'.