Visual migraine auras experiened by children

Hello, :). Sorry I didn't give you a more lengthy description of my experiences before, but I have some doubts as to whether they are really migraine related or not. The truth is I dont get migraines, only the visual (and other sensory) disturbances that are related to it. For this reason I have been 'diagnosed', or my experiences have been labled, migraine aura, because thats what they most resemble.
My experiences were certainly more vivid as a child. I am a perceptual systems researcher, and my theory is that childhood sensory distortions are due to the developement of the sensory corticies (which continue to grow and change up to the early 20's). This explination is particularly fitting to the 'growing' or large hands senstaion. (also referenced in a Pink Floyd song I belive). The representation of the hands is the largest (out of all other body parts) in the somato-sensory cortex of the parietal lobe. It does not start out as large as it ends up in adult brains, therefore there are periods of growth in this area, and constant adjustment between the neural respresentaion and the nerve endings in the actual hand. This I belive is what leads to the bloating of our sensation of the hand (or other part of the body).
Other disturbances are not as overtly related, but again I think their true cause (in children) is cortical plasticity and developement and perhaps unusual means of this developement not common to all.
Most visual auras, are thought to be caused by the phenomena of spreading depression, a slowish wave of activation and deactivation among retinotopically organised visual cortical areas (hence the usually systematic spread of the disturbance across the visual field over time. I may make a post about what I know about this phenomena in the migraine community. I haven't previously because i am not sure if people will be interested or not (I can bore people at parties with my sensory neuroscience babble ;) )I may anyway though.

"My hands swelled just like two balloons..."


I love Pink Floyd

My migraines only started after puberty.