Abstract
In migraineurs, coloured lenses were found to reduce the visual stress caused by an aversive pattern known to trigger migraines by 70%, but do such patterns also produce a low-level anxiety/fear response? Is this response lessened by colour? We sought to investigate this in a study comprising a broad screening component followed by a dot-probe experiment to elicit attentional biases (AB) to aversive patterns. Undergraduate psychology students completed headache and visual discomfort (VD) questionnaires (N = 358), thereby forming a subject pool from which 13 migraineurs with high visual discomfort and 13 no-headache controls with low visual discomfort, matched on age and sex, completed a dot-probe experiment. Paired stimuli were presented for 500 ms: aversive achromatic 3 cpd square wave gratings vs control, scrambled patterns. These conditions were repeated using the colour that was most comfortable for each participant. VD was greater in the more severe headache groups. On all measures, the migraineurs were more anxious than the controls, and a positive relationship was found between VD and trait anxiety. The 3 cpd gratings elicited an aversive AB in the migraine group which was somewhat reduced by the use of colour, and this was not seen in the controls. The results suggest a new role for colour in reducing visual stress via anxiety/fear reduction.
Highlights
Repetitive, high-contrast, achromatic square wave patterns, repeating at around three cycles per degree, are known to trigger visual discomfort that can lead to migraines in susceptible people [1]
This would suggest a new role for colour therapy for migraines different from that suggested by Wilkins and colleagues [9]
Twenty-nine percent of male participants experienced no headaches compared to 12% of the females, 44% of males experienced headaches compared to 49% of the females, and 29% of males suffered from migraines compared to 39% of the females
Summary
Repetitive, high-contrast, achromatic square wave patterns, repeating at around three cycles per degree (cpd), are known to trigger visual discomfort that can lead to migraines in susceptible people [1]. It is claimed, and has been shown to some extent, that ‘colour therapy’ reduces visual discomfort and decreases the chance of experiencing a visually triggered migraine [2,3]. Some colours have anxiety-reducing properties and exhibit a calming effect on emotions [8], and we hypothesized that colour may reduce the anxiety and concomitant aversive response This would suggest a new role for colour therapy for migraines different from that suggested by Wilkins and colleagues [9]. The dot-probe task is commonly used to determine the existence of a pre-conscious emotional salience of a particular visual stimulus [10]
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