Flickering in eye - optical migrane?

[TineBiene7]

About once a week, I have a vision disturbance, which starts as a tiny flickering dot that gets larger and larger and turns into an irregular type of circle.  The edges of the semi-circle are like jagged "saw-type" sharp edges in brilliant colors. At first it seemed that I was seeing this in both eyes, but recently I have been able to pin it down to my left eye only. When I close my eyes I can still see the visual disturbance, only the colors are more vibrant. The semi-circle gets larger and larger until it is out of my peripheral vision, which takes about 15 to 20 minutes.  During this episode, I am unable to focus on anything (can

[Arides]

Hi, I'm just having my 4th episode, good to know what it's called and that it's fairly common and harmless.

Regarding the trigger, I have very similar experience. For me, I always got this blur when I overloaded my eyes the day before, and then again the day of the incident. Something like:
- Spending a day before a pc after being outside in bright sunlight w/o sun glasses the day before -> blur.
- Waking up in the middle of the night after a sunny day w/o sun glasses, turning the lights on, reading a bit on the pc, the going back to sleep. Next day full on staring into the pc screen. -> blur

I really think the trigger are just overloaded eyes, and what's making this difficult to spot is the fact that it takes two days in a row (or more?) to completely overload one's eyes to such extent. I'm just speculating here though. In any case, hope this helps.

[pressen]

A flashing or vibrating semi-circle of jagged, colorful lines, like the ones described here, interferes with my vision sometimes.  It's in the right eye and to the right and it doesn't matter if my eyes are closed or not.  These spells come in 15 to 20 minute lengths as I engage in normal everyday activities.  I had several "attacks" years ago following their start on the day of 911 (distress/stress?) and they disappeared within a few months.  I couldn't connect them with any particular behavior or activity.  I've had two recently with the last one showing up yesterday at lunch time. I can still read a newspaper or work on the PC, but they're annoying.  I've never had headaches in my life, and no vision problems according to my optometrist.  It was a comfort to find others describing a similar experience, and without any horror stories of losing vision, etc.. Has anyone ever had other images associated with the flashing?        

[extremeash]

I'm glad to see I'm not alone with this. My symptoms are somewhat different though. I see the exact same bright jagged lights in the corner of my eye that you described. Usually seems to be the left eye and bottom left corner. I had excellent vision all my life and that seems to be going down hill now (hard time seeing signs I should be able to read clearly). However, I have no vision loss. No black or empty spots. No headaches. No aura. Just this jagged light. I've been afraid to see the eye doctor because I don't want to need eye drops for the rest of my life (my mom has glaucoma) but I'm going to schedule something to make sure this isn't retinal detachment...... For a while now I've been seeing what I thought were floaters. But they are white... They seem more like flashes. Which I read are more serious than  floaters. Anyone here who has any flashes or loss of vision should see a doctor for sure!

[lalau9292]

I am very hypocondriac.  I am 22, and my symptoms are like black spots (like shadows of light) that create kind of irregular flashing patterns, like in a chess game. I especialy see it when my pressure is low or when I am very tired. It looks like an epileptic visual attack, and really scares me, but I have had it for one year or so and nothing happens.

[GrayDwarf]

Just experienced my first one of these and thankful to all those that posted before me. Mine looked like a bendy snake made up of flashing multi-colored triangles. Permanently stuck just to the right of my forward looking vision.

The flickering happened regardless of eyes closed or open.

When it first started 20 minutes ago, I was having a really hard time reading because I had to turn my head or wait a second to see the next word. Talk about scary.

My day was like this. Drove into work on a sunny day (hardly any direct sunlight) but had sun glasses on. Drive into a parking garage (that was dim but not dark), put on my 125 cheapo reading glasses and watched a 30 minute tutorial on HTML 5/Canvas on my mobile phablet device inside my truck. The device was propped on my steering wheel. The tutorial had very tiny text that I recall straining a few times to read the lines of code. This was nothing new for me. I did just start wearing reading glass a couple months ago. Anyway, after the tutorial, I left the truck and carred a semi-heavy box to my office which was just a couple elevator rides and very few steps. I did struggle to open a heavy security door with my hands full. I set down the box and logged into my computer. I leaned over to log into my second computer to kick off automation and then when I turned back to my main dev box, I noticed it. I thought it was a flickering sun spot and thought it was from reading in the dark or perhaps the sun sneaking in through my closed blinds but quickly realized it wasn't going away. I went and grabbed coffee and it stuck with me and didn't diminish. I came back to my office and started looking up info and landed here. While typing this, the problem has diminished to nearly nothing (about 30 minutes) just like everyone elses experience. Again, thank you so much for sharing your experiences. At my age (42), these types of events can be scary. Couple other quick things. My back is a little sore (bad computer posture all the time), and my neck has had chronic off and on pain for years after a car accident.

[SirHardo]

Well I'm am busy having these symptoms for the first time as i type this. In both eyes simultaneously, and has grown from taking up about 10% of my visual awareness to now about 50% in a space of a half an hour. No pain or discomfort whatsover. My beautiful rainbow shimmmering jagged eye-shaped anomolies are making 2D images almost appear 3D. The pattern here for most people seems that we all were staring at a contrasting electronic screen for an extended period. For me it was an X-Box game that had me riveted for 4 hours last night. My eyes felt dry when I went to sleep last night.