R. Noseda et al., Nature Neroscience, Advance Online Publication (January 2010)

Lit up. Cells in the retina expressing melanopsin, like the one shown here, could explain why light is so painful for migraine sufferers.

Why Light Makes Migraines Worse

Staff Writer

Migraine sufferers often retreat to a dark room or pull the shades down. Any light just makes the searing pain worse. Now, scientists think they know why--thanks to some help from blind volunteers.

Just why bright light exacerbates migraines is unclear, because brain regions that govern vision don't overlap with those that transmit pain. To narrow down which vision cells might be behind this, anesthesiologist Rami Burstein, who works at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School in Boston, and colleagues tracked down migraine sufferers who also happened to be blind. Of the 20 blind individuals who volunteered for the study, six couldn't perceive light at all; they lacked eyes or had a severely damaged optic nerve, which connects the eye to the brain. The other 14, who suffered from genetic and other conditions that lead to blindness, couldn't see, but they could sense certain shades of light.




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