Precision-tinted lenses for migraine relief

Neat. [Link]

Participants first were prescribed tinted lenses with an intuitive colorimeter, a deviceused to illuminate text with different colored lights, creating for each test participant an optimal color of light that led to the greatest comfort by reducing distortion.

Tinted lenses with this optimal color were created and given to each test subject, along with two other sets of tinted lenses without the optimal color. In addition, each patient was paired with a migraine-free control subject, who also was tested with that patient’s three sets of lenses.

Once in the fMRI machine, the subjects were exposed to a range of striped patterns while their brain images were acquired. Then the researchers analyzed the effect of the tinted lenses on the activationof the different visual areas of the brain.

Specifically, the tinted lenses decreased hyper-activation for migraine sufferers in visual area V2 of the visual cortex of the brain.

Although patients reported some relief (a 40 percent improvement) using the control lenses, the precision-tinted lenses had a significant effect (70 percent improvement) when viewing the stressful stripes.

“The specific characteristics of activation we recorded could provide a potential biomarker for identifying those migraine patients suffering visual cortical hyper-activation,” he said. “This biomarker could prove useful not only for further evaluation of tinted lenses but also for studying the effectiveness of drugs to prevent migraine headaches.”