Abstract
Migraine is frequently accompanied by sensory disturbances, commonly visual, before and during the attack. Visual stimuli are also reported to trigger migraine. These two features have prompted studies of visual perception both during and between migraine attacks. Various aspects of visual perception have been shown to differ interictally between people with and without migraine, such as the perception of colour, motion, contrast, orientation and visual discomfort.

Interactions and correlations between these aspects and reports of visual migraine triggers, have also been reported. Apart from experiencing visual discomfort from the environment, the consequences of the cited differences in other aspects of visual perception, between attacks, do not, in general, affect a person’s day to day life as they are often measured by determining detection or discrimination thresholds. This line of research has, nevertheless, been used to refine models of neurological function in migraine, in particular, the debate between hyper- vs hypo-excitability, and to understand the variety of visual pathways that may be affected, both sub-cortical and cortical.
In this talk Dr Shepherd will review studies on colour perception in migraine using threshold and suprathreshold tasks where performance differences between migraine and control groups can be attributed to processing in the visual system that starts as early as the retina.

Biography
Alex studied Psychology at the University of Sydney as part of a B.A. and it was there she discovered a fascination in colour vision. She then completed an M.Sc. in Architecture on lighting, also at the University of Sydney. She returned to the UK to do a PhD on contrast colours at the University of Cambridge, Department of Experimental Psychology. On completion, she was employed for three years at the MRC Applied Psychology Unit (now the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit). There she was introduced to visual studies in migraine and started to work on colour perception in migraine, which she has continued to study at Birkbeck, University of London, Department of Psychological Sciences. Her approach differs to others working in this area by selecting colours tailored to how colour is processed in the visual system, rather than selecting colours based on where they lie in a uniform chromaticity diagram, or using primary colour names ("red" or "green", for example).

http://www.bbk.ac.uk/psychology/our-staff/alex-shepherd/areas-of-research-interest