How can coloured lights from an occipital seizure be told apart from a migraine aura? · Grey Matter

Speed and shape separate them best.

How can coloured lights from an occipital seizure be told apart from a migraine aura?

Speed and shape separate them best. Occipital seizures are produced by a fast discharge, so their lights appear within seconds, last seconds to a couple of minutes, are usually coloured and round, and can recur many times a day. A migraine aura is produced by spreading depression, which crosses the cortex at a few millimetres per minute, so by the international criteria it spreads over at least five minutes and lasts five to sixty, typically as a flickering black-and-white zigzag edge with a blind patch inside. The distinction is clinical, and overlapping cases are sorted out with an EEG and a neurologist.