Visual hallucinations of web form dimension

Spider webs

"Hi Ann, I have had a typical pre migraine type 'show' according to my opthomologist. It lasted about 1/2 hour and was interfering with my reading. It was shimmering triangles and I found that by covering either eye it still stayed the same so I knew it was probably not the eye itself but something they both had in common. No headache followed. This was several years ago. I too rarely have headaches I guess if thats what they are we are fortunate, we get the show but none of the pain. I see patterns like big spiders on the ceiling within my focus generally in red. It has to be something to do with the blood vessel or vein patterns in my eyes (my personal definitely non expert opinion). [According to current medical opinion, the spider web hallucinations occurring as visual migraine aura are hallucinations of central origin produced by the pathomechanisms the of migraine aura, rather than entoptic visions of the blood vessels of the eye.] Sometimes there are big bursts of light like fire works... Take care, Renie"

(Renie, Newsgroups: alt.med.cfs, Subject: Med: Light show, July 10, 1996; additions in square brackets by Klaus Podoll)

"Read Oliver Sacks' book Migraine. It's all in your brain. That is NOT to say *it's all in your head.* Great description!!! The spider web effect is not all that common. You might be interested in some of the work on African Rock art by David Lewis-Williams, Thomas Dowson, and an article in Latin American Antiquity recently by my husband and me [Haviland and de Laguna Haviland, 1995] in which we all discuss this same thing as it affects art from all over the world. Then again, you might not!"

(Anita Haviland, Newsgroups: alt.med.cfs, Subject: Med: Light show, July 11, 1996; additions in square brackets by Klaus Podoll)

"Hi, I'm new here and I was just wondering if anyone experienced what I am experiencing. When ever I get really bad headaches, (and sometimes before,) I often see little spider web kinda lines in my vision, sometimes they look like little lightning bolts. Am I imagining this?"

(Storytllr, Newsgroups: alt.support.headaches.migraine, Subject: spider webs, November 24, 1997)

Ina Rubloff, Aura Variation, 2002. © 2002 Ina Rubloff

"As the aura worsens, hours or days later, the lines may or may not be moving as much, but more territory is 'peppered' with white and/or bright yellow spots, occasionally another color, areas vacillating between concave and convex (see Aura Variation); usually numbness takes over one side at this point, beginning with the tongue, lips, nostril, corners of the eyes, fingers and toes. This is when I decide which medicine to take, based on side effects and cost, not necessarily in that order. Numbness in jaw allows me to press hard on the temporal mandibular joint to relieve some of that pain. It begins to look like a spider web pattern."

(Ina Rubloff, Email to Klaus Podoll, June 8, 2004)

Ina Rubloff, Disoriented, 2002. © 2002 Ina Rubloff

"Finally, the spider web pattern clearly looks like planes, squares and rectangles of various depths, moving constantly – akin to 'jumping checkerboards' or 'dancing bifocals' (see Disoriented). At this point, vertigo and nausea are severe. I'm usually falling a lot and feel quite confused."

(Ina Rubloff, Email to Klaus Podoll, June 8, 2004)

"I've had about five or six migraines, three of which I suspect were brought on by eating contaminated pork or fish. Each time, the migraine would be preceeded by a visual aura. The aura basically looked like a long but narrow spider web stretching horizontally across my field of vision. It glowed a bright white color and pulsed and flickered as if some kind of electrical current were flowing through it. The strands of the web seemed thick and flat. The aura remained in one part of my field of vision; I believe it was the lower-right side. So that no matter where in the room I looked, the aura would remain there. It disappeared before the actual pain began."

(stockton, Newsgroups: sci.med.vision, Subject: Illustrations of migraine aura, December 12, 2005)

Inside of a computer chip

Unsymmetrical lattices and filigress inside of a computer chip (image in the public domain from www.freeimages.co.uk, see here).

"First let me precede my comments with the fact that I do NOT get 'classic', but rather 'common' migraine. So, I do not have aura to presage an attack of pain. however, that said, I DO notice visual things when my eyes are closed & particularly when I have a 'mild' headache. Last night (well, alright at 4 AM), I was lying in bed noticing some of these things. I would see spreading patches of light, starting as pinpoints & then expanding to wider areas. The areas would change from place to place but were mostly on the side that also had pain. But the really interesting (to me) part was that these lighted areas looked like the insides of a computer chip, you know, with all the little tiny directional lines like pathways. I could actually see the lines most clearly in the areas that were neither really bright nor really dark, but somewhere in between. I thought of them as neural pathways & was sure that I was 'seeing' random firings in my cortex. Neat!"

(C. Adams, Newsgroups: alt.support.headaches.migraine, Subject: Visual Disturbances, December 12, 1999)

"Oh, and to the person who mentioned the computer chip auras in this thread -- yes! i get those too! -- in black and white, strobe-ing to orange and black and back -- lovely! just delightful..."

(Catherine Yronwode, Newsgroups: alt.support.headaches.migraine, Subject: Visual Disturbances, December 17, 1999)

Blood vessels

"This sounds like what I see from time to time, but not along with pain or nausea. I see little dots of light that seem to be traveling along the same sort of path an optic blood vessel might make. I only recently, last four years, realized that this was only typical of migraineurs and not everybody."

(Rosewoman, Newsgroups: alt.support.headaches.migraine, Subject: spider webs, November 24, 1997)

References

Haviland WA, de Laguna Haviland A. Glimpses of the supernatural: Altered states of consciousness and the graffiti of Tikal, Guatemala. Latin American Antiquity 1995; 6 (no. 4): xxx-xxx.
Lewis-Williams JD, Dowson T. The signs of all times. Entoptic phenomena in upper Palaeolithic Art. Current Anthropology 1988; 29: 201-245.
Podoll K, Robinson D. Migraine Art - The migraine experience from within. Neurol Psychiat Brain Res 2002; 10: 29-34.
Podoll K, Robinson D. Migraine Art - The Migraine Experience from Within. North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, California 2009, p. 201-203.
Sacks OW. Migraine. Revised and expanded. University of California Press, Berkeley-Los Angeles-Oxford 1992.
Siegel RK, Jarvik M. Drug-induced hallucinations in animals and man. In: Siegel R, West L (eds) Hallucinations: Behavior, experience, and theory. John Wiley and Sons, New York, NY 1975, 81-161.

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